


Wage the Dawn

by Diane Marling (Lauredessine), Lauredessine



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, BDSM!!!!!, BONDAGED!!!!!, Drama & Romance, Druidism, Druids, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Forest Sex, Forests, France (Country), Historical Accuracy, Historical Romance, Kinky, Merovingians, Middle Ages, Multi, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Romance, Sex, Sorceresses, Swords & Sorcery, Witchcraft, Witches, cathedral sex, germanic culture, germanic pantheon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-02-24 21:06:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21505246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauredessine/pseuds/Diane%20Marling, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauredessine/pseuds/Lauredessine
Summary: He needs to kill her.Set on a mission by the queen of Austrasia, Alaric's path leads to the western forests of Neustria, to the doorstep of a witch feared by kings and queens. But amid memories long buried, threatening to resurface, his father's daunting expectations and the alluring spell of letters, ink and paper, the bloodthirsty warrior falters. Can he truly be what he desires? Or should he abide what is expected of him?She needs to fool him.Entangled in a kingdom's scheme for supremacy, Bruneflède has used heartlessly her wiles. Born a powerful witch, she is quick to upend the chart, seducing it instead, hoping to please her queen by weakening the enemy kingdom of Autrasia. But what happens when Bruneflède is betrayed? What happens when Alaric begins to express a semblance of love? What happens when Bruneflède finally begins to feel?What happens when conflicting kingdoms threaten the very fate of their assets? What happens when violence or sex is no longer the answer?Anything for Survival.
Relationships: Bruneflède (OC)/Alaric (OC), Bruneflède (OC)/Alaric (OC)/Celsa (OC), Bruneflède (OC)/Celsa (OC)
Kudos: 2





	1. The envoy of Brunehaut

_Neustria, February 580._

  
  


The river churned mightily in its bed, hauling in its furious wake mangled trees and mangled corpses. Armies and entire forests seemed to be tossed about on the restless waters of the Seine, armies of Austrasia, armies of Burgundy; Forests of Paris, forests of Metz.

The murky river colored brown, stirring mud and sand and dirt and other repulsive remains of what were once farms and bridges. The river did not care, in its fury, of lost lives and lost trees. It took. That was all.

And Alaric, far from used to such a fickle weather and such a stormy snake, could but wonder about the power the earth displayed. He mused for a moment, wiping his blood-soaked blade on the damp grass, that such power was akin to this God bishops and abbots still babbled about. This Gods was one of might, one of plight. This God could, if He cared, wipe his creation from the face of the earth. He shaped it with every whims of His and stirred it whenever he saw fit. Fate rested in his hands and he pulled the strings like a rider the reins of his horse.

God was in many way a king. And kings played God in their palaces, those relics of glorious Rome, wreaking havoc across their land, laying waste on mountains and rivers with fire and blood, disposing of men like cattle, sending some to slaughter, riding front like a shepherd. They did with their kingdoms whatever they pleased, the rest of the world – Franks and Gauls both – following in tow, bound to be played with like wooden puppets a whimsical game. Wooden puppet with stark sharp blades and a king to lead, sword in hand, charging the enemy east, west, north and south.

Alaric had seen them, compelling leaders, rise atop the pavise, carried round their troops, conquer fortresses, wed princesses; and fall, stabbed by a covetous brother with no sense of honor.

Such a king he respected. Wise, clever, august, war-like, raging, conqueror. Such was the king he had once followed and seen fall.

A king he would soon avenge. A king whose death would lead to his brother's downfall.

A low growl of satisfaction made its way in his throat, coiling around the cold breaths he took. Even wearing a cloak of wool lined with fur Neustria was cold. The wind whipped at the river spray while the water lapped at his feet.

He scrubbed the blood off his hand and cast an eye around the river bank, a cold indifference etched on his face. Here and there lay sallow men dressed in white robes, their legs and fingertips blue with cold, their bones jutting and jagged, famished, their face silently indifferent in death. Only the blood trickling from the violent slashes stretched across their chests gave them a semblance of color.

If death could be so colorful.

He turned the head of a lad of no more than fifteen with the tip of his sword, an emaciated bloke with eyes too round and hair too dark for his dim pallor. A Gaul, seeing from the copper torc around his mangled neck. And smacked the cheek with the flat of his sword.

His eyes then fell upon a child, a boy, lanky already, with hair as fair as the sun. And Alaric felt a twinge of guilt then. And chided himself for this show of weakness. Dead men and women he could do with. Dead children – it was something else entirely. Once he could have, once hair of summer, but once was gone and buried along with his pride.

He hauled a bulky corpse towards the fringe of the forest and sat down on his paunch, his head cast downwards to a lanky boy, just as scanty as his companions. This one had brown hair, a pointy nose, prominent teeth and a broken nose. A boy just past childhood. He was red, sweat-soaked, tied around a tree with strong ropes and smelled of fear.

Alaric shot him a mirthless grin, to which the boy answered by the quivering of his lower lip.

At least this one was not placid like the other. A new slave perhaps, one that had not yet been beaten to blind submission. That was why he had spared him. The boy would talk, and relieve the weight of the letter in Alaric's satchel. That damn letter and its godly magic.

“Not very valiant, your friends,” he flippantly said, sticking his blade into the ground, unsheathing his seax. The boy swallowed and Alaric's grin widened.

His eyes wandered towards the old, wizened blind man trembling up the slope near the road. That old blind man, so still and silent with his oxes and his rough cart of another age. Alaric squinted, a slow apprehension creeping its way to his neck.

There was something about this man, something to conjure fear. Something old and resilient, something almost pagan. Alaric felt cold beads of sweat ooze on the nape of his neck and strengthened his grip on his seax.

He directed his blade towards the man. “Is that your master?”

The boy heaved in a long flickering breath. “Kill me now. Get it over with. I am dead meat anyway.”

Alaric exhaled a long sigh laden with annoyance and huffed as he stood up. “You are messing with my patience, boy.” In a stride he was by the boy and threatened him the tip of his blade against his jugular. “And I am not a patient man.” His voice was low and rumbled with menace unspoken and yet terribly plangent. He could almost feel the slit on his skin and smell the metallic scent of blood. He could gut the boy if he cared enough, but it was cold and cold made him weary.

He was used to cold. Being an Austrasian he was used to hills of snow and endless winters followed by blistering hot summers. But in Austrasia the cold was dry and devoid of the dampness of a land so close to the sea.

Here, cold and rain percolated through his skin to chill him to the bones.

Alaric shivered sharply, securing his cloak around his shoulders. His braccae, although tightly wrapped around his legs with leather bands, were not thick enough to prevent the blistering breeze to seep through and freeze his crotch.

“Shittin' country,” he spat, kicking at a lonely rock. “And your master lets you run around clad like that?” he jeered the boy, his blade following his recoil – much to his prisoner relief.

The boy gulped. “My master is too powerful to care,” he tentatively said.

Alaric barked a laugh. “Ha! Him?” He pointed his seax to the old blind man. “How could a blind wizened man rise to prominence in the kingdom of the Franks? Weakness is not power, boy.”

The lad's feature settled into a deep and dark scowl. “He is not my master.”

“Then who is he?”

The boy squinted at the old man, still standing a few feet away, his hand resting on his oxes' heads. He appraised him askance for a long moment and attempted a shrug he failed miserably with a whine from his mouth and a grind from the ropes.

“I don't know. I have only known him for a few days.”

Alaric titled his head, a deep frown etched on his face. “And yet you've followed him here.” He surveyed the bank and its litter of corpses. “And those?” he nodded towards the slaughter. “Friends of yours?”

The boy's eyes landed on a hand, his whole sight blocked by the tree. A murder of crows were already roaming the sky on their scavenging hunt. He squeezed his eyes shut and gnawed his lower lip with a whine. A small thread of blood marked the place his teeth dug the flesh.

But when his eyes opened again, they were cold and indifferent. Alaric gave a gasp and a knife-like grin made its way across his face again. The boy was not so weak after all. And Alaric had always loved a challenge.

He would break the boy. Break him harder than his master whoever they were. He would cut, perhaps, gut or slice, but the boy would talk. A Frank had no care for gentleness. Franks did not win wars by coaxing crowns from kings' heads. Franks killed and ravaged and showed no weaknesses. To Hell with the law. The law was for the weak.

Such was he taught and such would he abide by.

The pungent stench of rotten flesh, defecations, and mud tore him out of his thoughts. Perhaps he ought to bury the bodies, or toss them into the river to goad Neustria's godless king, he who murdered sons, wives and brothers and his demon of a wife, bereft or any sense of honor. A Gaul, judging by her name and her sense of heathen treachery.

He recalled for a moment, with a grim satisfaction the brief fray turned butchery that had unfolded less than an hour ago; how he had spied on this strange procession of young and old emaciated men and women, following the cart of the blind ox-steerer. How amiss they were in those somber woods, their diaphanous carcasses marching who-knew-where, ominous shadows clawing at them like tendrils of a darkness of times of old, silence around as though they were not fully human.

He recalled the emptiness in their eyes, the void of their faces, the determination and the strength of their feeble hands. The strong grip of the young boy, barely in age to start a proper training, had been as firm as that of Alaric's father and for a fleeting moment of utter terror, it had felt a heathen creature had taken hold of him. They all abode by the same urges, the same thoughts and they did not seem to have a mind of their own, moving as one, as though they were past fearing death.

And then Alaric had felled them as easily as rattling twigs, the empty shroud-like vessels leaping towards him only to perish on his blade. He recalled how he had sent the head of a withered woman fly towards the bank of the Seine, how he had gutted a boy, how he had seen he who would be his prisoner run for his life and how he had caught him and tied him up, forcing him to watch as he slaughtered his weak companions one by one to ward off his first fright like a man would.

He recalled his cold indifference slitting throats and finishing the rest off for crows and wolves to feed on rotten and meager remains.

It was the work of a killer, a lowlife. That much Alaric knew and he had ceased to care as soon as his sword was drawn out of his scabbard. His mission was his mission. A battle was a battle, no matter the enemy, no matter from where they hailed. War reaped corpses and fed on vanquished blood.

Alaric had done what his father had once done before he had grown too old and cowardly to stand behind a king anymore; what his brother had once done before he had been felled and what others might have done had they not perished.

Unworthy opponents this lot. And a blind man to add to the insult.

Alaric shot him a mean glare and tossed a stone at his head. The man did not so much as flinch. His eyes merely looked into nothing and everything at once, as if he was elsewhere; as if he was nowhere, nor there.

He cursed under his breath and angrily stared at the half-nibbled dead sprawled from forest to riverbank. Who was a Gaul? Who was a Frank? Who was a Saxon? Who was a Thuringian? What dictated the law when confronted to such an eclectic pile of dead slaves?

Alaric thought as intensely as he could for a moment and sighed, the answer obvious. Those were slaves, slaughtered slaves. The law did not apply to them.

“You!” he yelled. “Blind man!” He took a rock in his hand and threw it on the man's back. To his anger the man did not flinch, nor did he whimper. “The sight of you makes my eyes sore! Get off before I go blind!” He threw yet another rock at him. To hell with the law of protection. Why should he care about the weak? Caring would make him weak.

He mindlessly rubbed the back of his neck and stretched his back. The blind man still stood near the fringe of the forest and the beginning of the old roman road.

“Sweet suffering Merovech! Fucking go!” he bellowed, throwing a rock that made the man bleed, much to his satisfaction.

The man was still for a moment and calmly lumbered away, his staff in hand, his oxes in tow, the cart emptied from its riches and its stocks.

Alaric nearly shuddered with the weirdness of it all. Something cold caught him by the neck, claws digging deep, refusing to let go. There was a ritual about this, something ancient and persistent, something heathen that called for more, something unnatural. It was as though the gods of those eastern pagans his father had spent so long murdering still roamed the face of the earth.

It was divine, but is was bleak, devoid of benevolence or sense.

For the first time, Alaric knew true fear.

And his eyes met his prisoner's and his fear waned. The boy felt like this too. And he had power over him.

A knife-like grin returned to add to the coldness of his face.

“So,” he casually said, sitting on the corpse's belly again. “What was this grim gist? A jest? A farce? A mockery, or true heathenry?”

The lad unblinkingly swallowed. “That is not for me to say. Kill me. My mouth is shut anyway.”

Alaric squinted. “You keep saying that...” This fateful death, the white robes, the processions in the middle of the woods, the chilling sense of witchery... He felt his heart sink when it dawned on him what the boy was. “Sacrifice,” he breathed. “Is that what you are, boy? Sacrifice?”

Something dawned and died in the boy's pupils. He swallowed again, fists tight against his thighs.

Alaric's grin widened. He gave out a loud guffaw. “Ha! So your master sends you with other slaves to be a sacrifice! A sacrifice for what? With so many slaves at his service your master must be rich, and so close to Rouen...” A spark of a cruel hope bloomed in Alaric's eyes. “It has to do with witchery, doesn't it? No bishop or abbot in their right minds can condone this.” The letter suddenly felt lighter in his satchel. “Tell me boy, are you a Christian?”

“Of course I am!” the boy said, a little too fast, a little too red. “My family has been Christian since Christ walked the earth!” He softly downcast his head. “And it was meant to happen, I suppose. A slave does not belong to himself. A slave is his master's toy.”

“So who's yours?”

“Someone not even God can touch. Someone too powerful for you to attempt to weaken.”

“But I can touch you,” Alaric said, trailing the tip of his sword around the boy's round jaw. “ _You_ are not untouchable. _You_ are a slave.” The boy quook and whimpered faintly and Alaric huffed a sigh. “I told you. I am not a patient man.”

The flash of a blade. The sound of opened flesh. The boy screamed, a long slash stretched across his face. He whined, his breath frantic, his eyes wide in panic.

Alaric apathetically stared as the blood dripping from the tip of his blade, his face torn into contempt. He carefully wiped it on the sleeve of the boy's shirt and sheathed the blade, falling on his butt on the dead below.

He groaned to the sky, pinching the crook of his nose. He sighed. “Your masquerade, it's witchery. It is ungodly. What's its purpose?”

The boy began to weep, yielding the the fear of it all; the pagan procession, the slaughter, his brother dead at his feet, the warrior taunting him, the blind old man who made his blood chill, the shrill screams of danger plangent in his mind.

“The goddess,” he whined. “We're the servant of the goddess and we must accomplish the ritual. Our master commanded us to.”

“Which goddess?”

“She who was, is and will be. She, accursed and cursing Neustria! The one water and sky can't shake. The one our forefathers used to revere and quake in front of. The goddess our foremothers babbled about,” the boy sobbed. “Nerthus.”

Alaric barked a callous laugh. A goddess! A woman so powerful to earn the title! This idea was ridiculous to the utmost. Women, as resilient as they were, could not compare with a god who made men after his image. Women were weak. Men were strong. Alaric's laughter billowed towards the sky. “There is only one god, boy. A powerful one, ruling over even the blood of Merovech. None is above Him.”

The boy's eyes bulged, his mouth twisted in agony. “I have seen her,” he whispered between his wails, snot mingling with blood. “Lord help me I have seen her!”

His fear perspired and gripped Alaric by the neck – adamant as he was not to fear a woman, queen or goddess. His body hairs lifted in opulent goosebumps. But he had a mission and this hint of information was for him far too delightful for him not to give in and wolf the intelligence raw.

“What did she look like,” he said as flatly as he could considering the simmering fear in his stomach. Corpses and slaughters he could stomach. Witches and paganry was something else entirely.

“Made of raw gold – her body painted with heathen imagery... Cold. Cruel. Heathen. Godless. Terrible and beautiful at once. The Devil! The Devil incarnate in the body of a wench! A woman baring her breasts for animals to feed at her teats! Fornicating with goats and wolves! Laying with grim gods and evil spirits in luxury! A witch!”

And Alaric smiled, and chortled, his face lit up in spite of fear. He had found her. She whom the Austrasian queen once described as a woman wearing gold on her skin, honey on her hair and dark as a veil. A witch marked with pagan lines.

“Where were you going?” he asked, a buoyant joy in his voice, a knife-like grin on his face.

The boy heaved a long breath of agony and downcast his head sidelong. “Lexovia,” he whined. “To give the goddess her due.”

Alaric closed his eyes for a lengthy inhale and for the first time he smelled it in the air; direction. It was in the salty breeze from the sea, the musky scent of sap, the earthy smell of rain-soaked earth, the strong stench of the river and its litter of mud, the rotten fetor of rotting corpses and the metallic whiff of fresh blood. Everything converged across the river, along the old roman road to Lexovia, where he would finally achieve this mission queen Brunhaut entrusted him with several months ago.

“What's your name, boy?” he softly asked.

The lad squinted, tears and blood making his eyes sore. “A slave has no name.”

“Surely you do. No one is born without a name.”

“Just,” the boy gingerly said.

Alaric nodded, his seax out of its scabbard. “Thank you, boy. I will see that you are remembered.”

The boy's eyes widened in horror, his mouth shaped as to say no, tears pouring from his bulging eyes.

And Alaric slit his throat.

And the boy's head fell lolling, blood slowly dripping from his ravaged throat.

And he died there, tied into a forest of dead bodies, yielder of secrets. Weak.

Alaric frowned, a twinge of sadness twisting his heart till a knot wound its way into his throat.

Carefully he stepped forward and turned the boy's dead head to his. His eyes still bulged, almost alive, not fully dead, as though he was a vessel a spirit could inhabit again. Gently, Alaric parted his hair from his gore-smeared forehead, and closed his eyes.

“Just... Poor name for a life so unjust,” he mused softly. He shuddered and gave a flickering inhale. He squeezed his eyes shut and untied the boy. The rest of the corpses, he tossed into the river. Let it poison those treacherous Neustrians. Alaric did not care enough.

The two boys he retrieved, and dug two little graves, just there in the forest, roughly carving crosses, one bearing a name, the other a little nothing that was something enough.

In silence he knelt, his blades kept at bay in their scabbards. And at once he stood, shaking this brief moment of weakness off, the ghosts of old scars throbbing across his back. His eyes darkened in front of the two little graves. The set of his jaw tensed.

Angrily, he wiped away beading tears, cursing against his softness. His eyes rounded the forest in search of a man to kill to erase the stain of his tears.

No one.

He was alone. Once, now and forever, he was alone.

Alone with a mission, a letter and too much blood on his hands for a man of his age.

And yet his father's voice echoed against his ears with all its spite, with all its rage, with a seething contempt. Weak. Mutt. Some words gutted better than any swords. Some words did more rampage than entire armies set loose upon kingdoms.

Softly, he took the letter from his satchel, unwound it slowly. His eyes danced around the round edges of the letters, words caged, tamed still on a simple piece of parchment. His fingers trailed the edges with a want no woman had ever been able to equal. No whore, no wife, no slave was as entrancing, as enrapturing as those curves. He could almost make up a breast here and a waist there among the roundness of the calligraphy, but in the end his wonder trumped his lust.

His eyes gleamed, mesmerized. And he yearned for nothing but steal a glimpse of the craft behind this magic.

With it he would seize his father's words, impale them on paper and burn it like he would a house.

There was a quiet rage beneath it. There was a fierce cruelty behind this want for letters. There was the thought of power, of knowing something a lot knew not. There was revenge also, and retribution against death, against fate and against every enemy he had ever killed.

There was the exhilarating idea of imposing one's will to time, to conquer it.

Alaric breathed out a flickering exhale, shivering with desire.

The art was still concealed into shadows, hidden to his comprehension. It was still coyly shying away. But Alaric, for certain things, was a patient man. In due time it would yield and unfurl its secrets to him.

For now the letters screamed to him. He knew their meaning. He knew his mission.

His sight briefly wandered towards Rouen. But tempted as he was to spy for queen Brunhaut, there was his mission and his mission only.

He gave a slow, cold smile. Lexovia.

The thought of blood feeding his blade again so soon made him shiver with anticipation.

Soon, the witch would die.


	2. The queen's eyes

Bruneflède slowly turned the hilt of her dagger in her sun-kissed hands, the old gems glinting with the scarce sunlight percolating through the heavy clouds massing in the sky. Under the veneer of utter indifference she frowned, alarmed at the darkness of the sky, the power-laden air, as though the dark forces troubling the world were at work again.

Her grip strengthened around the shaft of her old dagger, a piece of old twisted copper whose carvings had blunted to hardly a few bumps over centuries. The sky darkened, shrouded in black as if mourning.

To many this betokened of thunderstorms and downpours, but Bruneflède knew different. She had long been acquainted with the arcane of power, with the secrets of nature, with omens of all nature. She had long opened her eyes to men, animals and earth. She had long known to trust her instincts. They never failed her.

Mindlessly she stood up, and stole to the narrow window overlooking a broad cloister withing view of the old cathedral of Rouen; a relic of an empire felled by its kings, devoured by wolves, fallen into chaos.

For all its might, for all its gold, for all its armies, for all its monuments soaring to the sky in laving massiveness, it had fallen. And no one to remember them but emperors sitting on a throne a world away. No one to revive them, but a legacy set in stone and paper.

The world was for wolves now, yapping and barking for a few parcels of land, biting each-other's tail for a bigger part of the loot.

And Bruneflède now stood in the heart of the den of the most unpredictable of them all, he so ruthless he would sacrifice to his children if it meant overpowering his brothers.

But Bruneflède was past fear now. It merely brushed her skin like a little nothing. She was past feeling altogether. All that tethered her to the world was the queen's words., made of air but enough for a semblance of existence.

She was nothing but a vessel. An empty shell filled with memories past, familiar faces now merely a twinge, empty promises for empty aspiration and a knack for survival.

And magic.

It fueled her veins, prickled at her fingertips, thrummed in her head. It was everywhere and nowhere at once. It was a flurry in the air, a whiff of cedar, a slow scent of fertile soil. It was certainty, it was doubt, it was feeling, it was emptiness.

Magic was not something to learn. It as something to feel.

And Bruneflède, for all her emptiness, for all her veneer, _felt_. From the heaviness of the air, to her beating heart, she felt.

The omen was there, the same as always. Death. A war coming.

As far as she could remember the omens had been bleak. And she had never been wrong.

Neustria was as cursed. The gods saw fit to punish those dark of soul, those murdering sons and wives, those wreaking evil upon those they ruled. Such was the will of the gods and Bruneflède accepted it with a fierce joy.

Let the world unfold as it may. Fate could not be cheated in any way.

She breathed in the brisk and rainy air and pressed her eyes shut, reining a tear in, chiding herself for feeling. A long exhale emptied her again. That sweet familiarity, that grim void, that coldness again felt to her more like a home than warmth.

Her hand fiddled with the shaft of her dagger again.

Feigning indifference, she let her sight wander around the antechamber to the queen's quarter. It was said that Brunhaut's own antechamber was a lavish array of riches, but Bruneflède felt that she could say the same about Fredegund.

As raw as it was, the queen had still had the decency to set a bench or two against the walls, a chair right between the windows, cushions here and there for the comfort of important men and ornate tables for weary guests to eat while waiting. The small room was an array of Gaulish bronze cauldrons, of roman furniture, of Frankish tapestries. It was everything Chipéric's kingdom strove to be with the combined effort of his wife, the bishop and he, himself.

It was a world away from Bruneflède's forests, smelling of moss, earth, rain and magic, stirring with unseen beasts and thrumming with distant hoots and howls. If she focused enough she could almost feel the earth shift beneath her bare feet, touch the rugged bark of a willow tree, smell the damp foliage of high oak tree. If she pushed her memories far enough, she could hear a giggle or two billowing in the air, feel the magic stemming from the earth itself, hear the gods in their low rumbles, taste fate in the sweetness of raindrops.

If she let herself sink deep enough she was back in her forests, where she walked among wolves and beasts, where nothing was unknown, where everything was unveiled, where her hair loose caught in branches, where her clambering scorched and scratched her skin, where no danger dwelt but that of a world harsher and more honest than that of men.

She shivered, the coldness of the wooden floor beneath her feet a reminder of what she had lost and gained in compensation. She stiffened on the floor. For all the forests in the world, for all the shelters, danger found her. Menace always found those who chose a life away from it. It was relentless, preying on hopes, prying on the weakest of the lot. It found them and devoured them and nibbled at the remains. And if it had eaten past some of the lot, it came back with honey in its voice, with a veneer of sweetness and civility. And again it nibbled, binding the living in a cage, feeding them puny bites, and orders lest they be devoured.

Bruneflède hated that beast. Bruneflède had tamed that beast. Now Bruneflède merely watched it wolf other lives in cold indifference. The law was clear and it had been the gods' laws for as long as men had spoken.

Survival was all.

She suddenly felt eyes on her and again her hand was at the shaft of her dagger.

The mayor of the palace stood behind her, almost a breath away, leering at the boldness of her garments, glowering at the heathen heresy of her bracelets, squinting at her dark veil falling to the floor. She could feel him lech, aroused, wanting and murderous. She could feel it raw and searing and blistering. She could feel his coldness. She could feel his mistrust. She could feel everything, from the way he appraised her wiles, to the thrumming hatred fueling his veins.

So close was he, she did not deign to spare him a second of her sight. The only one she was ever allowed to look in the eyes was the queen; Fredegund. And whoever crossed her eyes was to be killed on sight.

Only Fredegund told her who to see and what to foresee.

She was a queen and Bruneflède, in spite of her craft was but a puppet, a weapon to be handled with iron chains.

Bruneflède had always wondered what it would feel like to escape her grasp. She had consulted the sky, the gods and her runes. And always she had been drawn to the same answer. She was far too dangerous to let loose. Either she served obediently or she did not serve at all.

This taste of freedom... She had been caged for so long she had forgotten the taste of it. Her sight had been restrained for so long she knew not what to see. She was a bird in flight with no sense of up and down, nothing but sore wings and orders never to step aground.

The creaking of a door opening on the other side of the antechamber tore her out of her considerations. A servant, a boy of no more than thirteen skittered towards the mayor of the palace and whispered something in his ear. With a wide grin, the mayor straightened up and gave Bruneflède a cold glare.

“You!” he barked with all the might of a paunchy little wolfish-faced man risen to his full height. “The queen will see you now.”

Bruneflède heaved in a long inhale, concealing any telltale sign of emotion and stepped towards the thick oaken door.

She was about to step in when the mayor bent to her hear with all the venom he could spew. “Try something, _bitch_ , and we'll see who's the most expendable of us two.”

Bruneflède barely paused to heed his soft-spoken menace, much to the man's ire. His face took to purple in a second. Bruneflède could almost touch his vibrating anger. She could almost taste its bitter iron. For a man so high seated at the king's table, he sure yapped a lot. As most dogs did, he craved the bigger bone and a good pat on his head.

Bruneflède almost gave in to a smile. How easy would it be to play with his lust only to leave him in shards of broken desire. How easy would it be to destroy him, to curse him, to send him to her gods as a toy for them to break.

Her fantasy was without avail, though. One curse and the whole of Neustria would be at her door to have its way with her only to kill her like she was nothing at all but a bag of pleasurable flesh.

The door shut on the mayor's fuming insults and gripes and Bruneflède was in Fredegund's chambers. A large and luminous room separated by a lavish curtain of silks that hid a massive bed, a roman chair sitting on a low dais, chests lining the walls, cauldrons here and there, tapestries on every wall and carpets from the east coating the wooden floor.

There sat Fredegund. Her body slyly sprawn in her roman chair, curtain drawn, servants behind to respond to her every whims. All wearing white tunics. Bruneflède tried not to think about their faces. If she did not see them, she did not know who would die and who would not. If she did not see them her guilt waned.

All in all, Fredegund's room was at her image, ostentations, splendid, alluring and opulent.

The queen herself was something to behold, her lithe fingers slowly tapping at her armrests, long fingers adorned with countless rings. She was dressed according to the byzantine fashion; a long ample-sleeved embroidered dress falling to the ground, a large cloak draped over her body, a belt of bronze and leather tied around her narrow waist, her dark hair wound into two braids hidden behind a long veil encompassing her whole frame.

Though her garb was roman-like, her jewelry was strikingly Gaulish, with its rough torcs around her fair wrists and slender neck, her earrings of bronze and gems, her necklaces gracefully looped around her neck and the thick circlet keeping her veil in place atop her head.

Fredegund was a perfect array of the successful mingle of Frankish and Gaulish population. There was something fierce in her fair almond-shaped eyes, something wild in the set of her thin lips, something entrancing in the curves of her body, something relentless in the dark aburn of her hair, something regal in her demeanor, and unforgiving in the crook of her grin.

Fredegund was a woman of a magnetic charm. Some said she was a witch herself, but Bruneflède knew better. Fredegund had always been more. Shrewd, cunning, without limits, Fredegund was akin to a goddess. And Bruneflède knew to both fear and respect those.

The queen straightened up on her seat and gave a little wave of her hand that sent a servant running to get a stool. Another wave and Bruneflède sat. It had become a ritual, this thing. Something almost sacred.

And she was right, for wielders of magic abode by the gods, repeating sacred rites over and over again until the end of times.

Only then, Bruneflède knew not who would come to prevail. Who would live and who would die.

But a weapon needed not muse those kind of considerations.

“How did you find your slaves?” her voice rang with a round and cold lilt in the room.

“Young,” Bruneflède breathed.

“Then perhaps I'll send hags and inane men next time. But young slaves tends to tend to you better and quicker. Old slaves are used to the whip and I am not keen on doing them the mercy of serving you.”

Bruneflède emptied herself of feelings. Why should she care about them after all, when all she could feel from them was an inevitable death. Briefly she wondered if there was anything left of her heart or if she had dug out her emotions so often she had just been left hollow. “Do what you must, queen. After all, here I am merely a servant.”

Fredegund gave a surprised sound between a gasp and a giggle. “Not a servant, Bruneflède. Not a mere servant.” Her hand traveled to a tray to pick up a heavy cup of gold. Bruneflède could smell the sweetness of Southern wine. Reaped from Chilpéric's estates deep south, no doubt. “You are a pillar in my rule. Never doubt your importance, child.”

At thirty-four, Fredegund would be ill-advised to talk to a woman ten years younger than her like she was a crone. Aging oneself was akin to condemnation to an early grave.

“You've sent them back, I suppose,” said Bruneflède gingerly.

Fredegund clicked her tongue, the sound sharp and almost pleasing, and licked her lips slowly, delighted at the look one of the male servant gave her; one of adoration, of a roused lust. Her charms still operated and it only made her more powerful. “With your due, of course. Who would I be if I let you starve?”

Bruneflède almost recalled a young boy amid the white procession that came tear her out of her beloved forests, of her little shelter that had stopped being a shelter long ago; a young boy of no more than fifteen. She had caught his sight in no more than a blink but already she felt mourning faintly knock on her hardened heart. She breathed herself empty again. He was probably dead at the present hour. They all died. It was part of the great scheme.

“Do you know why I have summoned you?” Fredegund asked, sipping her wine.

“To serve you I suppose. As is always the case.”

“Did you foresee it?”

“No. There are things too common, things too constant to be foreseen. There is no need to see what is here before you, plangent and pungent. There is no need to unveil what one knows.”

“Then what did you see?”

“Kings rising and falling, death, plague... It is always the same. Fate runs its course in circles. There is no stepping out of it, as you well know.” In her voice echoed a threat so faint, so pale Fredegund hardly blinked. Bruneflède clasped her hands with all the poise she could.

The queen's fair eyes darkened, enhancing the umber allure. She pertained something of the divine, something of the pagan. Her pale fingers unfurled on the arm-rests, her back straightened, taut like the string of a bow, a lioness about to leap. “What about the king?”

Bruneflède took in a weak breath she hoped rang with indifference. “Your husband... Should you concern yourself with him and not inquire about yourself, queen?”

Dark ominous clouds loomed in her eyes, dark as the sky outside, dark as the churning, murky waters of the Seine. She was a storm. A calm one. A storm one would be well advised to fear. “I inquire. You answer,” she said coldly.

“Of course,” Bruneflède said, half whispering. “I did not mean to step out of my place.”

The queen did not kept silent for as long as she fancied, a long moment which sent shivers crawling down Bruneflède's spine. “My husband – what do you see for him?” she asked again.

Bruneflède fiddled with her pouch and cast a rune, then two, then three. Her brows creased as she let in her every instincts. “I see a challenge. I see four kings, wolves of the same blood, fraying for scraps of a lion. I see fire, burning-” she stopped, not daring enough to spurt out a truth she felt as intensely as the blood pulsing in her heart. “burning lambs, while a she-wolf rises. I see your husband, queen, victorious and brave. A king in his prime again.”

Fredegund squinted, wary of such words. A she-wolf mourning a lamb- “That she-wolf, could she be the Austrasian bitch?”

“Queen Brunhaut? Perhaps...” Bruneflède said, hoping to ward off what she saw picturing the Austrasian queen in place of the she-wolf. “Fate is fickle. Some things are not set in stone and might change again providing a little nudge.”

“Her son is not a lamb. He is a dog, a false king kept on a leash by duplicitous counselors, championed by Guntramn and coddled by Guntramn-Boso – Though I still owe him my gratitude for the killing of Theodebert...But I should kill him for his wrong allegiance.” She rested her head in her hand, a deep thoughtful expression etched in her every features. “Audovere?” She jeered. “Not she-wolf enough to mourn her son and daughter, those silken weaklings!” Her face settled into a deep frown. “Unless...” She snapped her head towards Bruneflède. “Unless you are not witch enough and have only seen the past!”

Those words sent Bruneflède waver on her seat. A searing anger answered to the hot throbbing pain in her heart. If she was not so keen on her usual mask of indifference, she would have wept. Wept with disappointment, wept with heartbreak, wept with rage. Instead, she let it glide past her like air. A weapon she was and weapons seldom wept.

As though she had not been slapped with Fredegund's odious doubts, Bruneflède downcast her head. Words simmered on the tip of her tongue like venom. “Perhaps... Perhaps I have merely seen Galswinthe's murder. Or perhaps I have seen something else... The murder of a prince of your husband's line, the very same who sought to marry your enemy, or else the murder of a bishop; Praetextatus – though exiled - Gregory, Rauchingue... The list is long among your adversaries,” she seethed, barely audible.

The queen blinked, sheer hatred and anger distorting her fair features for a brief moment before she tamed them into a cold smile reeking with menace. “Oh? Should I count you as one too?”

“No, queen. Never. I know what I owe you and I live to serve you. That is all there is to know.” Bruneflède breathed in some courage and met the queen's eyes. “I serve you. I owe you my life. What more can I do to prove my loyalty to you?”

It was a game. A twisted game Bruneflède was pried into playing whenever the queen summoned her. She doubted and Bruneflède offered herself yet again, renewing a lease on her freedom again and again until the queen would tire. It was being offered a leash and taking it for fear of loneliness and peril.

Bruneflède might not be entirely free, but at least she was safe and considered. And with some years she had grown a taste in it, the mystery surrounding her, the power this feigned deference felt- She would not give it up for the world. It was as if Fredegund shared with her a secret; the taste of queenship.

A slow smile made its way across the queen's face, sharp as a knife. “Offer me? A son, strong, to resist illness better than his weakling of a brother, Chilpéric's former might, Brunhaut's head on a golden pavise, Praetextatus dead, groveling still at my feet, power, youth, a lasting legacy. Can you give me those, girl? Can you make my enemies die and my allies thrive?”

Bruneflède felt an echo of the queen's smile on her face. She could. She knew she could. She was not as deep-cunning and shrewd as the queen, but providing pulling the right strings, she could provoke what the queen desired.

If she kept silent what fate pressed into her sight.

“You just ought to ask, my queen, and it shall be done as you please.”

“I ask,” the queen mused, fiddling with a necklace. “I ask... I ask for a spell. A spell for a son, and a potion for a king. I ask for things to fall as they may. I ask for this and more. I ask for a favorable fate and a vigorous king. That is what I ask.”

“Then it shall be done as you ask. A spell, a potion and fate-”

“And a curse,” Fredegund added. “For Basine, Audovere's weak daughter. And for Clovis, that silken yapping dog. Sneak into his bedchambers one night, and may your pagan blood strip him from God's favors.”

Bruneflède nodded. “Do you wish me to seduce him to madness, or should one simple night be enough?”

“Do what you must.”

“Yes, queen.”

Fredegund then dismissed her with a wave of her hand. “You may leave now. And do not forget that no one is to set eyes upon you. Only those I ordered you to curse.”

Bruneflède bowed as low as she could, and met again Fredegund's eyes, cold and pale emeralds, searing with a drive stronger than the movement of the earth. Briefly, Bruneflède mused about them, then the queen's lips, thin edges of crimson and then her breasts, round and pale. And for what seemed like the first time – akin to all of those first times – Bruneflède found it no wonder that the king was so enthralled with her. So magnetic was she one could not resist. She could make mountains and seas yield.

Bruneflède was at the door when Fredegund spoke again. “Should you see the king... I'll remind him of pagans' fate. You do not want to suffer like your father.”

Something prickled at Bruneflède's eyes, something killed long ago. Something akin to a ghost, akin to pain. “Yes,” she breathed.

“Olvia.” She snapped her fingers and a young girl of thirteen skittered towards the queen, pale and frail, her clavicle jutting jarringly under a ragged shirt. “Tend to her.”

Bruneflède's blood chilled in her veins, still like a serpent. The girl had been given a death sentence.

And like many things, Bruneflède let it slide, the girl's tawny curls gliding on her skin like mist, her big blue eyes hazy like the memory of water. The girl was not real. She was a slave. She was a dead. She was a ghost.

When she met her eyes, Bruneflède saw nothing if not a design to serve.

If she had a heart it would have shattered whole and lay in brittle shards at her feet. But she had none in not magic thrumming to give her a semblance of life. Magic, drive, work, purpose, it was all that made her heart beat now.

The door flew open to the bishop of Rouen, appointed some couple of years ago after the banishment of he who dared wed Merovech, Chilpéric's eldest and Fredegund's nemesis, Brunhaut, the infamous Praetextatus.

This one was named Melantius, and was as little as his character. He leered instead of seeing and cajoled instead of talking. In his small eyes, Bruneflède could discern a thirst for wealth, power and beautiful women. She could also see a vivacious hatred for everything pagan, an untamed desire for conversion and a taste for martyrdom and saintlyhood.

Bruneflède loathed him and his little pig-like face, his thin, dark and sparse mop of a hair, his crooked nose and his sharp white teeth. She loathed the contrasts in this man. She loathed his occasional goodness and loathed his cruelty.

She loathed that his words against heathenery had seeped deep enough into Fredegund's ears for the queen to show a sudden disinterest in the things of magic, what had made Gaul fearsome and mighty in its time.

The air he breathed was poison.

The bishop strutted past her without a glance, a haughty grimace stretched across his toady face. And the door slammed shut behind him, keeping Bruneflède the witch, Bruneflède the pagan, from the sanctity of queenship and power.

In a surge of anger, Bruneflède held back and pressed her ear against the hard wood of what kept her from her patroness.

She dared a glimpse at the little slave girl, standing still near the door, her head lolling like a little nothing. Her eyes were empty, her arms slack, and Bruneflède knew she would not stand in her way.

Her hand went to her dagger.

“... seek the service of a pagan?” she heard the bishop fume.

“It is good service for a good cause. You would gain, as would the bishops of our cities and those in the land owed to us, with the rise of my husband and my line. I am merely ensuring the kingdom of the Franks is whole again, under a one and only king.”

“It means forgetting Guntramn,” he said something under his breath which Bruneflède couldn't decipher. “...sure?”

“He is old. He has no heir, if it isn't for Childebert. Godson or not, he must not inherit the kingdom. Plead to the other bishops, of Brunhaut's devious nature, of a promiscuous affair with her son, of murder of kings, of incest, of anything, but I want her loathed.” There was a long pause stretching the the gloom of the sky. “And gag Gregory. None of his words, none of his letters. Burn his books if you must, but I want him silent for this to succeed.”

“Still I fear for your soul... aided by the devil.”

“My soul in your hands is well kept,” Fredegund said, her voice warm, echoing with a round lilt that Bruneflède had never once heard in her many audiences with the queen.

A sting of jealousy speared her through and she violently recoiled, and folded her veil further on her head, hiding her face under its shadow, like the wraith she was, the legend, the dark secret kept at bay, the mystery, witch, wench or goddess.

That was all she ever was. A passing shadow. Empty air.

With large strides and a downcast head she followed the other wraith, this nothing of a girl, across narrow corridors and wooden staircases, towards a remote part of the palace, to a room with one single window gaping over an unkempt garden, an apple tree its only ornament.

There, the girl left, mumbling under her breath that she would come soon with food and a due. And the door locked close behind her.

Bruneflède did not look back. Her eyes were set on the tree, alone, like her, in a place that felt strange.

And met those of a man, old, withered, paunchy but bearing the long hair of the kings. A man she now pictured in his prime, taking cities and women for the pleasure of conquest and the pride of an eldest son.

Chilpéric.

And there she stood, disobedient and majestic at once, looking down on a king, her face shrouded like that of Nerthus on her travels.

She grinned, and disappeared from the window.

The dagger spun in her hands. Her veil billowed in the cold air of the evening, setting some strands of golden hair free.

She disobeyed. She looked at the king.

And was overtaken by a fit of laughter. The king would die. For the first time she felt the sweet taste of revenge on the tip of her tongue.

Let the world fall as it may. She could not change fate and its ways.


	3. Curses at night

She prowled into the room, casting eerie shadows on the crossbeams high above. The flickering candlelight danced on the sleek wood, and carved the back of the prince with deep crooks and bumps. A scar here, a scar there, pale remains of wars unfought and the scourge of the blood of Clovis.

She felt bare, garbed into a light and thin keltoi, her every moves sending the fabric billowing into the heavy air of the room and its smell of frankincense, honey, musk and expensive perfume. She felt bare, her throat so kindly offered to the blood of Clovis.

But nakedness had become an armor over times, worn over and over, trampled by armies, kings and queens. Her steel had become a mountain and those were the goddess's domain. And magic filled her again in gusts of might, power ebbing and rising with the tides of her will. She was a shell after all, a shell for power to fill. She was nothing but a tool, servitude embedded in her vein, fueled by the schemes of the powerful. Tonight it was the young Clovis, another it would be a guard, another the gods and then a servant; anyone power sought to subdue.

Her eyes found the prince, neck bent over a piece of wood he strove to shape into a boar. Futile attempt for only a boar could represent himself. A dog, no matter how long his hair, could not pretend to know the shape of a boar.

Bruneflède discarded mercy entirely – that was if she had once felt any.

Her hands lasciviously slithered on Clovis's bare chest, finding a golden fleece under her fingertips; her hands cold against the warmth of a body fueled by more than emptiness. A drop of sweat rolled its way down his throat and Bruneflède was tempted to follow with her tongue, instead spreading her hair against his shoulders, sending shivers of pleasure running across the nape of his neck. Her hands found his sparse beard, and his long hair and again they roamed his chest; gently, softly, almost fondly.

The prince jolted under her unbidden hands, something warm spreading around his crotch. For a moment he let her hands descend to his groin. For a moment, he let himself nearly come undone, his mind set on her breasts he wanted to grasp, to caress, to squeeze. That woman, he wanted to plow, to feel her ass bounce, to feel her rock under him. The thought alone nearly sent him undone. What kind of a woman was one able to sway a prince so easily?

In a blink he was upon her, one hand around her throat, the other gripping his knife now aiming at flesh instead of wood.

A jeer made his way across his face upon beholding the woman who had sneaked into his private chambers and made a display of her hands. "Fredegund's bitch," he rasped. "She who evades eyes. Now standing before me in flesh."

Bruneflède answered with a smile of her own, and a faint little moan at his hands around her throat. His eyes were sharp, searching hers, pupils of gold against a deep copper and Bruneflède withstood them coldly.

"Why, my lord Clovis, your strength is uncanny," she breathed, her hand sliding around his arm.

The prince scoffed. "And your scar is yet again ugly."

Bruneflède's smile took to a knife-like edge. A knife like that one which had split her upper lip asunder. A Frank's knife. Austrasian, Neustrian, she cared little about such considerations. She merely knew that it was a man like him who had once reduced her life to ashes.

Fate would will they all paid.

"Why have you come here?" Clovis spat. "No, don't answer just yet. Fredegund sent you, isn't it so? As for her design I can only guess from her gloating at my brothers' death! My father's sons are dying and she seeks to eliminate the last? For what? She spews such a poison the land bleeds, for she herself is poisonous. And now she sends you, her whore to seek my demise!"

And he pushed her aside and Bruneflède was sent falling on the ground, hair spread over the rich oaken wood, legs bare, keltoi rumpled, ripped by shards of wood. Her bones throbbed, her breath trudged, her head spun.

The prince stepped forward, looming over her, knife in hand, glinting with the light. "And she sends a Gaul, a scarred wench, against me? Blood of Clovis? The Gauls' arrogance knows no bounds! You forget yourself girl!"

"Girl?" Bruneflède cackled. "You are hardly a boy yourself! A child hanging still at his mother's neck! You forget yourself, lord, thinking yourself a man. You forget who lies in your father's bed. You forget your incapacity for marriage. You forget your place." And Bruneflède knelt at his feet, playing a coy smile on her face. "As for me, I do not forget. I am a woman, weak, kneeling at your feet. I could help you remember. I could help you be a king."

His hand landed on her head, gripping her hair to lift her face to his. Bruneflède whined. "Some say you are a seer. Some say you are a sorceress. Some say you are a goddess." He pushed her back towards the floor. Bruneflède bared her teeth. "I say you are a whore. I say you are a slave. I say you are lower than the shit my feet can't touch."

Bruneflède scoffed, a thin line of blood trickling from her nostrils. "By all accounts, your feet mustn't touch a lot of shit, let alone soil. You wallow in silks in your palace while warriors bleed the land and trample on hills and mountains. You are weak, blood of Clovis," she seethed, scrambling to her feet. "Weaker than me."

"Do not think yourself above other whores!" Clovis flared, attempting another move at her throat.

Bruneflède recoiled violently, eyes now two searing suns. "And you shouldn't think yourself above God – the gods. Princes die and you know it all too well."

His hand hovered over his the handle of his sword. "Is that a threat? I should expect nothing else from Fredegund's minion!"

"A threat, my lord?" Bruneflède cajoled mockingly. "But I am so weak, so frail... I am but a woman. A woman you could have had, humped to your heart's content." And he had wounded her pride and Bruneflède was bored of this game. Why seduce a prey she could curse? "A shame, truly. A waste," she lamented.

"I should kill you where you stand," he growled. "But I will be merciful. After all, pagans do not know any better. You will crawl back to that shrew my father has had the misfortune to beguile himself with. You will crawl back at her feet and you will tell her, that I am not to be weakened by the likes of you! That she needs fairer maidens, gentler maidens, most sincere maidens to sway me! You will tell her of your failure, and when you bleed, think that it is weaker than mine! For I am a man and you merely a pagan slave."

The slap of the truth underneath the words sent Bruneflède cold in her skin. Indeed he was in the right. Indeed she was a slave. A rich slave but a slave all the same. A slave who was coaxed into gilded chains, a slave who would offer herself bare to the queen of Neustria, her throat at the ready, begging for a blade to slit it, groveling, yearning for the fingers of the queen on her lips.

She was a slave. A slave to her heart, a slave to her lust, a slave to her plight, a slave to her weakness. It ebbed, the emptiness, as often it did.

And Bruneflède hardened herself yet again. It was not dawn and only to dawn could she weep. A prince had no use of such a display.

"A prince with a will of his own," Bruneflède mused. "Not as brave or heroic as his noble brothers, nonetheless... Perhaps you are your mother's more than you are your father's."

"Calling me a woman?"

"A coward, perhaps," Bruneflède evenly said. "A woman? Women are braver than most men and there are well enough queens to prove my words right. We do not flee battles. We endure, my lord."

Clovis's hand clasped around the shaft of his sword. "Do you dare put your assumptions to the test?"

"I have already, lord. Hence that scar you find so ugly."

He lifted his sword to her throat, a drop of blood to glide on the steel. "Should I kill you? Are you a threat?"

Bruneflède grinned mirthlessly. There was this nagging feeling tugging her guts, this dense and foreboding instinct, this intense feeling fueling her veins. There was fate, running its course, screaming in whispers in her ears. It radiated, from her heart to her feet.

"Not yet, prince," she whispered. "Not yet. Gods and fate are after all a greater foe than myself. But I foresee this; be careful of whom you trust, careful of whom you love, for your heart will be your downfall. It is up to you to decide, lord. For gods willing, a man can pull the strings enough that he eludes his fate."

"Is that true?" Clovis squinted, sword still at the ready. "I have heard other tales."

"It is true enough. And you should heed my warnings. It could save you. If not your life, then your soul."

"I have priests enough."

"Priests are fickle. I have a grander certainty. And if some tales are true, if some men cannot escape what has been woven for them, some, rare, are able to defy it. Some men can, like your God claims, ascend to their own free will, steering themselves the needle."

Clovis's hand fell slack by his side. "Why are you telling me this?" He asked in utter confusion. "Have you not come for my end?"

Bruneflède's face twisted into a pained grimace. "All men die, prince. Some sooner, some later, but all men die. Call it what you want, a trick, pity, compassion, change of heart, but I would dislike not seeing a man at least once, try to defy the fates."

"Heathen fate."

Bruneflède shrugged and strode away, and froze her hand on the door, heart heavy with the thought of betraying Fredegund even with false words. "Then put your faith into your God. Bar your door at night. Pray, lord. I hope He will be merciful enough to keep you in his thoughts."

And she disappeared into the dark hallways of the palace of Rouen, leaving Clovis there, in the middle of his chambers, chest bare, sword weakly hanging from his hand.

And Bruneflède only gripped her dagger the tighter.

She rummaged through her chest – the one none was to touch or carry – racked through pieces of metal, sheets of lead, runes, weaving tools and a wide array of herbs and at last her hand found a small object, akin to an odd mix between a needle and a knife.

In haste, basked into the darkness of the night, she snatched a sheet of lead and left hurriedly, wrapped in her veil and a thick woolen cloth.

Her feet led her to the banks of the Seine, unseen and unforeseen. The air had that cold stillness and no breeze was strong enough to rattle Bruneflède's purse, its runes and testaments of times of old, of a glory long lost to barbarians.

She let herself sink into the wildness of it all, the river, peaceful at last, the bare trees, the dark, low clouds looming above, the song of the night, of wolves and boars, of owls and cats. Untethered, she let it come to her, fuel her with a freedom long since felt.

She could almost feel her grandmother beside her, guiding her hand, teaching her the art of the herbs, the craft of the forest. She could almost hear her sister behind her, weeping because she just had a nightmare, and her mother comfort her with stories of heroes and magic. She could almost feel their whispers gently warming her skin, almost feel herself full again.

But it was a moonless night and she was alone, eyes lost into the distance of a river that stretched to an ocean she would never see. Blind, she was not, but her sight was confined.

Quietly she unfurled the piece of parchment and found the remains of a roman amphitheater, once soaring proudly to the sky, now sinking into the depth of the earth.

She sat and wrote, her iron pen digging into the lead, her spells guiding her hand, the lead progressively engraved with an old and forgotten magic.

Her dagger could have been enough. She could have slit the prince's throat while she had the chance, but unlike her father, she was not used to the art of the kill. Hers were her spells, her runes, her sight; not the craft of a Frank.

Curse she could do.

Curse Clovis and his misplaced pride; curse Chilperic with what elevated him; curse Brunehaut with what she believed herself to be; curse, curse, curse! Curse them all but Fredegund. Fredegund and her desire for a son, Fredegund and her benevolence, Fredegund and her impatience, Fredegund and her wariness.

Fredegund she could bless.

The eyes of the queen pierced her through. Always Bruneflède saw them. Always she yearned for them. She saw for the queen and the queen saw her. The queen saw her.

Her heart suddenly radiated with gratitude, with comfort. Fredegund had filled her with purpose, Fredegund had given her importance, Fredegund had given her her eyes. And swayed, Bruneflède had rejoiced. That for the first time in what had seemed like centuries, someone saw in her more than a body to plow.

And she furled the sheet back again into a roll, and dug into her purse to produce an old roman coin, and buried the offering deep into the muddy soil of the riverbank, with it a drop of her own blood taken from the tip of her dagger. Deep, deep towards the realm of the dead and the God ruling over it all; her blood another offering – to her father's gods this time, to the fates.

She stayed there. All night she stayed, buried her feet deep into the muddy ground, let the faint ebbing of the river come in droplets to refresh her skin, melt on her hair. Wrapped in a thick cloak, covered by fur and a dim moonlight she stayed, folded into herself, just like when she was young and things were simpler.

Arms wound around her legs she sat and let the world unfold before her. She let the night swallow her thoughts, her breathing even her existence.

Bruneflède had never feared cold. It was hardly as if she felt it. Bruneflède had never needed much sleep either. Why sleep of terrors when the night offered many unknown wonders, a multitude of shadows to conceal even the most despicable of deeds. Why seep into suffering when the outside world breathed peace.

In the forest at least. Rouen was something else. Rouen sprawled, its narrow, dark and soggy streets a haven for murderers and muggers. It stifled everything; the air, the earth, the water – Bruneflède's magic.

At night Rouen was all the deadlier, sucking foes power sought to subdue into dark corners to work their death.

And Bruneflède knew it too well. After all, she channeled its design. She worked death in the outskirts of the city – a remote place that had managed to keep a semblance of wildness – but she worked death still.

Deaths of princes and doom of kings.

And if the city teemed with scavengers, let them come. Bruneflède did not fear them. She had long since forgotten how. Fredegund's eyes were upon her. She was untouchable.

She was the scavenger now: a crow feasting on scraps of power, weaving her curses, her sight far ahead.

When dawn came, she hurried back to the tree under her window. A lonely apple tree so much alike to the one back home.

Her hand ran down the rough bark of its trunk, and gently brushed its young leaves, almost too frail for survival. A knot of sadness made its way into her throat. So frail they would not survive the end of Winter; so frail no apple would ever take.

She almost wept.

Almost.

Lost in her contemplation, the cold mist billowing in the garden, Bruneflède did not notice a sudden presence by her side, soft and bird-like.

"The dawn is beautiful, isn't it?"

It was a girl. A girl about Bruneflède's age. A girl whose round eyes sparkled with an innocence long sacrificed to games of power, a girl whose brittle smile made her seem brave. A dainty girl, a gentle one. One with hair the color of ripe wheat at sunset, a girl with hands as fair as a dove.

A girl almost frail, almost weak, her resolve and resilience simmering beneath. A girl Bruneflède could make out on the apple tree. A girl who loved dawn as much as she did.

A girl like she once was.

And, unbidden, something akin to mercy swayed her heart. "It is," she whispered. And it was dawn and dawn was peace. Dawn would not see curses cast here and there. This was the privilege of the night.

"I know who you are," the girl said.

"I know you too."

A mischievous smile sharpened her round face. "I knew you would. After all, your renown has reached to Thuringia. A famed witch such as yourself surely sees all souls."

Bruneflède lingered on the princess's face. Hers was not that of a sharp hawk. Hers was beautiful and pretty at once, dangerous and meek at once. Born from Audovere, cast in scorn by Fredegund after Galswinthe's murder, victim to her mother's injunctions in her remote convent in le Mans, she survived. She trod amid wolves and lionesses.

But she was a girl and amid men, girls never lasted. Bruneflède knew it all too well.

Why curse when fate was cruel enough that it did not need foreseeing to be plangent. The girl was a woman. And men were beasts enough to prey on them.

"You are brave," Bruneflède whispered blankly.

And her eyes set on her again and Bruneflède felt something warm ignite in her chest. There was something from this girl, something she yearned to get. Something she could never pry, never coax, something she was not certain she could accept receiving.

But she yearned and begged the sky for her eyes not to leave her, protected by their deep brown, pools of honey when they caught the light.

Basine's soft smile made its way smoothly on her face. "Why are you saying that?"

"You walk among snakes, princess. You withstand the death of queens, the murder of princes, the scorn of a father, the contempt of the powerful, the lecherous eyes of armies, the covetousness of the leudes – and you stand still, with that smile on your face."

Her smile hardened. So faintly that Bruneflède almost did not see it. "What is a smile if not a shield? What is kindness if not a fortress?"

"That may well be true," Bruneflède said to herself, her voice barely air.

Basine's hand caught a leave, gently falling the the frozen ground – a leave just like her, frail and unready – and sent it billowing in the air with a blow. Ill-omen, Bruneflède would warn. But there was in her breath, in her steady hand, something of the mountain, a resilience that, even waned was strong enough to steady her feet.

Fredegund would have her way, this Bruneflède knew, the omen acute in the nape of her neck, pressing her bones together. Bruneflède could feel Basine discarded and sent away. Her death? It was as distant as Constantinople.

Basine needed no curse. Hers was that of men and what they thought about women.

About daughters.

And she had seen Chilperic's eyes – or lack thereof – on his daughter. She brought him no glory, no dowry, so alliance. He would discard her soon enough. And Bruneflède's nagging foresight screamed about Audovere's further humiliation, Who would Fredegund be if she did not lower she who once was her master, reduce her to a name whispered with disgust. No sons to inherit a crown. No daughters to wed a prince.

Only Fredegund was to be queen.

A cold wave of fear prickled her ears but Bruneflède discarded it with the memory of the queen's eyes on her. Fredegund saw her. Fredegund gave her existence.

"You are afraid of her," Basine said from the tip of her lips. "Aren't you?"

Bruneflède breathed herself hollow once again, clad in a mask of indifference. "Who?"

"Fredegund." Bruneflède turned to her brutally and Basine's smile crooked in a snide. "I can see too. In fact, while I managed to blind many here, I am not. Reading people is as easy as to read a book. I can read you well enough Bruneflède. Even with your ice displayed for all to see. I see you. Just as I can see your heart. It is not misplaced, but you ought to choose its master well." Her hand brushed hers. Bruneflède shivered. "I see the queen well enough too. I know she loathes me. I know my father loves her. I am not blind, you see. But come what may, God will see that I find my way."

"The gods may decide otherwise," Bruneflède remarked.

"Christ will prevail," Basine noted. Her hand softly caressed Bruneflède's bare arm, and just as softly, just as warmly, her thumb wiped a beading tear away. With a grin made of sunlight and honey, the princess witnessed something ignite in the witch's hawk-like gaze; something almost beseeching, something yearning for more. She withdrew her hand, and beheld her suddenly falter. Her chest heaved with pity. "I will pray for you."

And she left, her sudden absence conjuring a cold emptiness in the garden. And Bruneflède felt herself empty. Emptier than she had ever been. What she wouldn't give for the princess's eyes on her again.

But what she wouldn't give for Fredegund's never to leave her.

Her sight killed, she said. Bruneflède wondered if it had killed before. If her eyes were responsible for her nightly sorrows.

Her sight killed. She wondered when the curse had begun.

Nights chased nights in Rouen. And dawn, a balm to the heart, blew their darkness away with its peaceful hues. At night, Bruneflède weaved her spells, for Fredegund, always. The queen had her days, had her nights, but dawn? Dawn was hers. It had always been hers.

And she spent her dawn alone, yearning for the princess's presence again while taking comfort in the eyes of the queen. And her days in a lengthy agony, begging for the queen's attention; begging for her to ask for her, to dismiss her – begging for her beloved forest.

And at last, after five days of silence – an eternity – she was called back to the queen's chambers. Her dagger spun in her hand. Her heart hammered in her chest, the vial and in it the philter that would grant the queen a son burning against her chest, searing with all its darkness, all its dead, all its grim omen.

Regally the queen sat, arms firm on the arm-rests, a servant behind who combed her lavish hair while another stood in anticipation, a tray in hand, wine waiting beside a golden cup encrusted with gems.

Deprived of her eyes for so long, Bruneflède drew in a sharp breath, relieved at last, of an uncommon and unbidden void that had deepened her ravenous longing. The queen faced her. The queen saw her.

And what would Bruneflède not give to stand behind her, to weave her spells in her hair, entranced by its smell of wealth and power. What she wouldn't give for the queen to allow such a thing.

"Well?" she sharply said, her voice chiming with honey.

Bruneflède let her voice glide over her, a wave of warmth spreading deep into her bones. "I have your spell, my queen. A spell for a son."

Her mouth curved into a mirthless knife. "And Clovis rejected you I have heard. Are you so insignificant that your wiles do not take? Should I have a younger girl brought here to spin his demise? What do you think? Should I replace you?"

"If weak magic is what your heart is after, my queen, you may do as you please," Bruneflède retorted, trying to conceal her bristling under her own honey. "In the meantime, know that Clovis is cursed. First and last. As for a younger girl, my queen, you may be well advised to find one unmarred by your husband's dogs. Find one pristine and pagan enough and your design may as well work – whatever it is."

Fredegund scoffed – even her scoff was beautiful; even her scoff was enough to send shivers of elation run down Bruneflède's spine. "Your wiles failed so miserably and I am expected to trust your wit? You overestimate your value, girl."

It was as if she had been slapped. The pain throbbed in her chest. Bruneflède had never been a girl to falter so easily. Her lips pursed into a snarl. It was not like her to be so weak.

"You have talked to Basine, I have heard." Her eyes were cold. Colder than shards of ice. "Did you curse her? Or did you fail at that too?"

Bruneflède swallowed, tears beading at the corner of her eyes that she wished would go up in flames. "I have not, my queen. For how could I curse what is already?"

The queen's eyes lit with something Bruneflède hoped was satisfaction. "Oh? What have you seen?"

"That the princess has been cursed when she was born. That a god has decided against her."

"And you did not curse her further," the queen accused.

"I have looked at her eyes. I have gazed into her soul. I have felt her skin against mine, my queen. Is that not curse enough if my sight can kill?"

Fredegund frowned, a finger slowly brushing her lips. "I will accept it, I suppose. But should you refuse your spells to me again, I will see that you are worst off than when I lifted you from this mudhole you call a home. First and last."

Bruneflède's ears rang cold in the warm room. "I understand."

"And do not forget that you are never to see my children. Nor my husband for that matter." And for the first time Bruneflède heard a rampant fear in her voice. For the first time it cracked. For the first time Fredegund unveiled herself to her.

An honor.

And suddenly it was gone, iron filling every clefts. "I need to know if I am to fear for their lives. I need to know if I still am to trust you."

"I am yours my queen. Always and forever."

There was something in Fredegund's eyes. Something vindictive, something scornful, something cold. "What have you seen, girl?"

Bruneflède started. She had seen – Seen many things and most of them did not bode well for the queen. Most of them glinted, gilded glory, by Fredegund was never a face in the tapestry. "A warrior is rising to the East. The last of the wolves. A wolf to fight a wolf and your husband is at play in this game. Neustria and Austrasia are weaving in the shadows against a holier enemy-"

"Tell me something I don't know, girl! Tell me something truer than my husband's alleged schemes! Do not – never – spew your lies to my face!" Fredegund suddenly yelled.

But it was true and Bruneflède felt it. She had seen in the king's eyes something akin to secrecy, something akin to betrayal. And Bruneflède felt. A storm rose to the East, a storm that would pass in a blink but a storm still, that would see the downfall of a king and the rise of another.

"What about Brunhaut? What about this self-righteous cunt and her weakling of a scribe whose words are insult enough to me and my husband?" Fredegund snapped. "What have you seen for them?"

"I have not seen from them."

Fredegund's face clouded with anger. "Then you are as useless as ever, girl. Perhaps I should get rid of you."

And again that slap, this time joined by a punch in the stomach. Bruneflède drew in a flickering inhale. "Perhaps, indeed. But perhaps I can still be of use." And conjuring her emptiness, she lifted her eyes to the queen, who tilted her head, a smirk on her face that Bruneflède wanted to touch, to brush – to kiss.

"Perhaps, indeed," the queen mused. "After all, you worked for a son of mine." She unfurled her hand expectantly and Bruneflède produced the vial only to witness it disappearing beneath the queen's fingers. "What should I do with it?"

"Mingle a drop of your blood and a drop of your husband's and drink it."

"Will it work?"

"With life you can never be certain. Life is after all as fickle as the tides. But this should do."

Fredegund turned the vial in the light, the glass catching the dim sunshine in a bleak glint. "Your blind warden has returned some time ago," the queen evenly said, eyes still riveted on the vial. "Your retinue has been attacked. Slaughtered. So much for decent sacrifices. A warrior of Austrasia it seems. An envoy of Brunhaut." Her eyes flew to her, sharp as ever, a chilling wrath to them. "Set to kill you of course."

There was a lightness in the queen's voice, an indifference that sent Bruneflède cold.

"But for all your defect, this is perhaps the opportunity of a lifetime for you. This is perhaps our chance to weaken Austrasia and its child-king once and for all." Eagerness chased indifference in her voice. "I may admit," she said, her voice soft and gentle. "That a prince is not easily swayed. But a warrior? Surely his lust is strong enough to let you play with him. You will seduce him. You will compel him to lead you to Brunhaut. Alive. Offer her your magic, offer her your spells, speak of an undying glory and the kingdom of the Franks, but I want you to look at her. You will see Brunhaut and you will curse her child. The warrior? Do with him as you please. Dishonor him, kill him, curse him, I don't care, but Brunhaut I want weakened. And you will come back to me – you will come back to me, Bruneflède, and I will reward you well enough." Her fingers gently caressed her chin, cold and soft, and Bruneflède shivered when her thumb reached the corner of her mouth. "Betray me, and I will know. Betray me and I will find a fate so fitting your sight will not see. Do you understand?"

Bruneflède steadied herself, erasing the haze that had been the queen's thumb on her skin. What she wouldn't give for a soft contact again. What she wouldn't give for Fredegund's eyes. What she wouldn't give, at last, for freedom, for her forest, for her release.

"Yes my queen."


	4. In the witch's den

Alaric's steel felt rested against his thigh, a wrathful satisfaction warming his entrails, his purpose at arms' reach. They did not lie at the hamlet nearing the forest. Nor did they, back at Lexovias, cowering under the shadow of their cathedral.

They did not lie when confronted to death, to bloodied blades, to tongueless mendicants – to the predicaments a warrior carried with him.

Alaric had not intended firsthand to kill. He had not intended to wreak his anger, his frustration over them. He had not intended to be what was asked of him among his peers. He had not intended the slaughters at all. If anything Alaric wanted silence, the thunderous drone of the screams, of guts toppling to the ground, of splintering shields, of fallen pavises, of steel kissing steel gone, swallowed by the letters slenderly dancing on parchments.

He had not intended to quench his thirst. But he had been called a woman and for such insult he had been ready to prove them wrong. Oh so terribly wrong.

And there he stood, in front of the apple tree standing tall in front of the fringe of the forest, token of his reaching his destination; the witch he was to kill.

And under the sunset it reddened. If he believed in anything else than God and the power of kings, Alaric would have ventured as far as to believe the tree bled for deeds done and undone. If he believed in a hag's tale, he would foolishly take it as an omen. If fear he could feel, he would dread magic.

But the tree bled and what was a tree to armies? Alaric had hacked his way through many a slaughter, worked his seax on many a warrior, bled and fell armies by the sole power of his might and the blessing of the Christian God.

He would not fear magic. Magic had no power. Magic held nothing to fear. Magic was already too old, fading from legends, fading from the known world. And then, there would be none. It would all be gone, while the Franks would thrive, reaping their successes in gold and lands.

His mother had once taught him to respect magic, but Alaric was too young already. Magic could never subdue him.

In long and lumbering strides, her trod through copses, thickets, gnarled trees, bushes, following a centenary path trampled deep into the ground by countless feet. And the wind whispered, its warnings gliding on Alaric, and he hacked his way deeper, deeper, always deeper, his manly skills on display for motherly earth to moon over.

Alone, the forest suddenly falling silent in an eerie gust, Alaric shuddered.

And felt his blood settle upon the sight of a clearing and a house clawing at the hill's flank, in all its glory of turf, of walls strengthened by heavy planks of wood, a roof of thick thatch coating it, the last strands an inch from the ground. High it was, like those house they spoke of in Brittany and Auvergne.

The witch's house. His blade felt lighter in his hand.

The door creaked open and even knowing the witch was most likely to be by the side of the Neustrian queen, he could not help yearning for her presence, for her immediate death and her blood dripping from his sword. He wanted her here. He wanted her dead.

And return home, where he would fight, where he would swallow his father's insults until the next battle, the next mission, the next kill.

The slave boy's face danced beneath his eyelids. And Alaric faltered. Men, women, he had killed many. Never did they come for a haunting. But the boy lingered still. His sharp eyes gripping the nape of his neck like claws.

"Christ ward me off from evil," he muttered angrily, appraising the room from the tip of his sword.

It was one of those Gaulish houses with their bare ground and central hearth, and their platform raised onto thick wooden pillars. A cauldron hanged from the crossbeams above, creaking as it swayed with the wind, sliding through the wood. And on the ground, dim and grim shadows of drying flowers, colorless, dismal compared to the rich vibrance of the wood.

Above, countless chests, grain, silks, pelts, gifts in silver. Alaric frowned, taken aback. What was a witch one who surrounded herself with gold and lived so miserably? What was a woman who dismissed her vanity, rather cherishing a spartan bed in a corner of the house separated by a pelt sewed with rags? What was a witch's den one who yielded the wealth of a king under the guise of a derelict hut in the middle of a forest?

Alaric's eyes adjusted to the light inside, and found a table, a stool, a broken bed in a corner of the house, in a place usually reserved for cattle that was empty. The house was all shadows, looming over the bleakness of the deserted house and its riches.

The house was emptiness. A complete and utter emptiness.

And Alaric's eyes fell upon a loom in another corner of the house; the neatest, the lightest. A massive loom made of fine oak tree, rimmed with intricate carvings, familiar figures of coils and chains. A loom keeping in its frame a splendid work, a work so intricately woven that for a moment, Alaric thought he saw a spider's web.

But it was not. It was a tapestry; made of silver silk, of golden threads of vibrant colors – And of something else too. It radiated in its corner, and compelled Alaric's eyes, entranced him and repelled him at once, with a latent fear, that it would take to fire suddenly, that it would bleed, that it would send him dead.

That tapestry... Alaric's most basic instinct urged him to avert his sight, to forget about it, to erase it from his memory. It was not meant to be seen.

By a mortal at least.

And Alaric was suddenly overcome with the sweet smell of honey, of roses and hay. With the entrancing, and binding smell of a woman. The hotness of her skin, her frantic and feverish breath... A wild hotness sending him nearly undone.

It all simmered; desire, lust, fear, utter dread and the elated wait of a fresh kill. Alaric felt himself reel, felt the world dance around him while his mind bulged with an excess of sensations.

The blade's scraping whispered settled his frenzied blood again. The loom he hid under a cloth. The fragrance he smelled until it meant nothing. Women, he'd had many: whores, slaves, prisoners... Women he'd fucked and women he'd killed. Why should this one be any different?

His lips parted for a steady inhale, the sun slowly dipping below the horizon.

His fingertips caressed the letters on the piece of parchment he kept close to his heart, slender curves, voluptuous shapes, and their godly magic beneath. He inhaled the paper, lost himself into the movement of the ink, tracing the unknown from his fingertips.

Sitting on the bed, he sent his boots fly across the wide room.

And lay on a mattress made of straw, feathers, linen and pelts, a remnant of an after-smell tickled his nose and his crotch.

Alone he lay, listening to the silence outside, and a wind that would not blow. Sword in hand he listened and lifted the blade, glinting in the dim light, sharp and ready for flesh to slit. Sharpened it sang, and blood it demanded.

Alaric yielded a smile, on the verge of a deep slumber in the witch's bed.

He merely had to wait.

And cometh the time, at last, she would die.


	5. Of gold and blood

For all the marching armies, for all the rising and ebbing of forests, of the sprouting and burning of villages, for all the leveling of mountains, the sweeping howling winds, the writhing of rivers. For all the breathing of the earth, the restlessness of the sea, the churning of the sky – for all the motion of the world, there was one thing, rooted deep enough in the very entrails of the world that it did not burn, did not shift, did not move, resilient in its steadiness.

The apple tree standing alone in front of the forest's fringe.

To Bruneflède it was everything. It was the gods, it was prayer, it was her father hacking wood for winter, it was her mother singing, it was her sister crowned in flowers, it was her grandmother's wisdom, it was her haven, it was her omens, it was the receptacle of her lost tears. It was the herald of home.

Her leather-wound feet gently brushed the tall grass upon her pushing herself out of the coach and its opaque windows, cutting Bruneflède from mountains and forests, from the gods themselves.

She froze. Where was the river? Where was the place they usually hacked the slaves as sacrifices? Why was the tree standing and why had they not done their dark deed there?

The air had that quiet, that silence, that reverence coating Bruneflède's ears with a peace seldom tasted. Fat and cloudy mist hovered over the ground, shrouding night's dead, veiling those of the day. The sky, for a fleeting moment, Bruneflède knew, took to a multitude of red and yellow and blue and orange hues. Pale was the sun, pale the sky, pale the mist and pale the skin of the slaves bound to death.

A forgotten anger suddenly made Bruneflède bristle.

Dawn was hers. Dawn had never seen dead here. And they brought her in front of the tree. They trespassed upon darkness and secrets as if a blind man was excuse enough to dare. How could he hope to navigate through this darkness when it wasn't his by faith. How was he to honor the gods when he bore that cross proudly against his chest!

She brutally turned around, the ax glinting with the dim sunlight. Bruneflède's eyes flared. “The sun has not yet taken its course.”

The blind man turned around, a few steps away from the coach, a row of slaves behind, heads downcast, facing the plain and the river rippling in the close distance, their backs at the forest, their eyes forbidden to touch Bruneflède.

He shrugged. “Does it matter to you?” her asked with his soft and deathly voice.

“To me, no,” she fibbed. “To the gods? More than you could ever know.”

“How so?”

Bruneflède tensed, dagger at the ready. “Sacrifices must be made under the light. Deeds done in the shadows are deeds untrue.”

“How should I know whether the sun runs its course or not?”

“I tell you.” Bruneflède sharply retorted, her mouth seething her venom. “You defile my gods and their sacred rituals. Do not desecrate the dawn too.”

“So it is dawn... Tell me, what does it look like?”

Million words teemed on Bruneflède's tongue, a multitude of emotions suddenly surging through her and suddenly she was weak. Her anger at her weakness swallowed them all and again she was hollow. “It is dawn. It is as beautiful as its name. And it does not look like a time for sacrifices.”

And the blind man released his ax, and Bruneflède walked away, and sat beneath the tree, the slaves barely shivering, barely living anymore.

The girl who had tended her at the palace was thin, her bones jutting out, her skin so thin it felt like paper. If Bruneflède cared enough to picture her eyes, they would reciprocate her own emptiness. If Bruneflède cared enough to imagine her death, she saw a girl with golden locks and flowers in her hair, colorless on her deathbed, her mouth the only red, a rosebud that would never bloom.

In silence she watched, a lioness about to leap on a world out of reach.

But dawn did not have the mercy of the day. And soon it was gone, replaced by looming clouds and a bleak grey sky.

Hacked, hacked, hacked, the slaves. Felled like dead trees. Buried under the apple tree.

A cold anger simmered in Bruneflède's chest, fueled by the vision of the slave girl – Olvia, Bruneflède recalled; she would always recall – peacefully gaunt. Each strike of the shovel into the ground was enough to make her remember that she killed, that the dead were the price to pay for her survival – for Fredegund's eyes.

If Bruneflède felt something other than magic, she would weep. She would loathe herself, say no to the queen-

But how could she refuse her anything when she was tethered to her eyes like the roots of a tree to the earth. How could she refuse her her magic when it was all she had left, aside from a cold house, and an apple tree warding her beloved forest.

The last strike of the shovel rang dismally in the cold, grey air of the day. And where Bruneflède used to sit – used to weep – was a mount of soft soil. If her tears fed the tree, now it was corpses. Hers by right. That of a defiled rite.

Among them the body of a girl almost as old as Bruneflède when she first wept her dead beneath the tree.

“Is that it?” Bruneflède dryly barked to the blind man.

“You tell me. I cannot see,” he said, his mouth curved into a cruel grin.

Bruneflède felt herself rage. Something churned, fueling her veins with more than emptiness; “I reckon they're all dead. And gone under the earth for that matter.”

“Thank you, lady, for your precious sight.”

Bruneflède nearly screamed. A long one. One to cleave the sky asunder. “Leave,” she seethed. “I have suffered your presence enough.”

“As you wish,” the man mocked, bowing in deference.

“Tread these grounds again and I will see that the forest swallows you.”

The blind man chortled, steering his oxes. “You menace, you menace. But I could almost hear fear in your voice. Ah! If only I could see your eyes. Unfaltering, no doubt.”

Bruneflède locked her breath in her chest, tears brimming to her eyes, and caging a scream, all she could hear was a silence broken by the man's distant laughter.

Abused and disgraced. With less than a word.

She had cursed for less.

Her hand went to her dagger. Her eyes turned to the apple tree and it bled. Bruneflède's heart sank, a cold wave of fear slithering down her neck.

It bled. Ill omen.

She swallowed whatever courage she had left and walked into the forest, her hand brushing past barks and leaves, her touch an act of love. Her forest breathed. The wind sent her hair billowing behind her. The smell of wet soil and flowers sent her mind ages ago, when she would wander at night, tame the wildness, unite herself to it, just as every single woman in her family had done. Her hand would run across the old stones, marking magic's domain. Her mouth would ease the night with songs of moonlight and old gods.

Her hand gripped her dagger. The place was defiled. The stones fell. Warriors had trampled sacred grounds as if it was nothing but mud.

There was nothing left of olden magic. Nothing but her knowledge and old beliefs.

And a cold, empty house.

A pagan father's death to be accounted for ruin.

She frowned upon beholding smoke taking to the sky in thick wisps from her crooked chimney. Someone had come.

A grin settled on her face. To tell she was afraid to wait for her death, it appeared instead that it was waiting for her.

  
  


Alaric sharpened his sword. Again and again on the whetstone, eyes locked on the letters of Brunhaut's commands he sharpened it – lovingly, devotedly. Wistfully. There had been a time long ago, where he would sit by his hearth, warming his cold hands over the fire, a time filled with sounds of scraping metal, of a child's laughter, of a woman's songs at night, of a playful banter between brothers. There had been that time and it was gone, blown away like ashes with the wind.

There was only his missions now. Only the endless movements of armies, the endless slaughters he gladly partook in to let go of a simmering rage. Against whom, against what, Alaric did not know. And he did not care enough to know.

His feet on the table, his blade in the crook of his arm, he barely lifted his eyes hearing the door creak open.

With a last stroke on his blade, he tilted the chair back to its feet. “I was waiting for you,” he said.

And his eyes met her.

And suddenly Alaric faltered. Not even an army could have made him bend the knee, but facing her he would gladly lay down his weapons and let her trample his doleful limbs.

He could not wait to kill her. Remarkable she was. And extremely dangerous.

There was a sharpness to her. And a roundness too.

There were her high cheekbones, sharpened by the wind like a dagger on a whetstone; there was the bluntness of a nose once broken set straight again; there was her jaw, set taut, dipping into a steep slope. There were her eyes, and their hard edge. The coldness of a hawk’s preying sight.

And then there were her lips, plump and cleft only by a thunderbolt-like scar. There were her breasts, smooth and round. There was her ass, there was her hair, sleek, golden silk, her skin, sun-kissed, matching the gold of her hair and her feline sight.

And to complete the allure, deep blue lines coiling, recoiling, entwined, crossing themselves, wound around her thighs, her arms and her side - lines shifting with her every move, as though they breathed on their own. For a moment - a moment of shameful fright - he thought snakes slithered on her skin, drawn to her like they would to the sun.

And then she spoke.

“I knew,” she susurrated, peacefully treading into her house.

And her voice encompassed everything of hers. For the first time, Alaric found someone whose words rang true. Dazzling her voice, enrapturing and dreadful at once, cold with a lilt of honey.

Alaric's eyes found her throat. A strike there and she would bleed out on the spot. Crimson against gold, he wondered if murder had ever worn colors so regal. He was much more used to mud and crusted brown blood.

His hand gripped the shaft of his blade but he was unable to attempt a move, entranced by the way she prowled in the room, her hand brushing the tapestry with something Alaric made out as fierceness – and a sliver of regrets. There was a lightness to her footsteps he could almost admire. There was a confidence in her nimble moves he almost feared. What was a woman one who did not fear men or death?

She couldn't miss the way his eyes met hers. She couldn't miss the lust, the desire, the fascination. She couldn't miss the bloodlust, the arousal, the way his bare blade reflected in his grey pupils. She couldn't miss how they seemed to follow her, afraid, yearning, and oh so wrathful. Confident he was, calm, at ease, watching her with a wolfish sneer. As if here he had power.

Brunflède smiled. Coldly. Finally a man upon whom she could exact vengeance.

Slowly, she let a moan past her lips. “Finally,” she breathed eyes closed in a false delight. “A warrior!”

She was gratified with his frowning, a toothy grin with the edge of a blade slowly making its way across his face. Her hand softly brushed the overworn metal of her dagger. Her eyes briefly darted to her tapestry in the corner of her room, the work of a lifetime. And women of her family lived lives longer than most – if not killed, if not weakened, their magic waned.

Fredegund's eyes gripped her. She would not fail.

A smooth smile blossomed on her lips and Alaric eased his back against the chair, sword in hand. “Care to come here?” He patted his lap.

Bruneflède's hips swayed with her every steps. “Care to wait, my lord? I have made a long journey.”

“Which ends here,” he added threateningly.

“Now, now,” she sighed with disappointment. “Why not delay the moment? Men are always so eager. Would you tell a forest to grow faster?” She disappeared behind the pelt separating her room from the rest of the house and a quiet laughter escaped her lips.

To tell she bared herself in the cold. For a brief moment Alaric wondered if illness would kill her instead of his blade. He almost felt angered at this.

She came out a minute later, a mysterious grin on her face and Alaric felt his member rise with eagerness. She was nearly bare before him, a thin chiton barely covering her breasts that she fastened loosely on her shoulder. She was still spinning this dagger of hers in her hand and produced a cup of mead she handed to Alaric.

He frowned and she giggled, dipping her lips into the cup, her tongue delicately brushing her lips. Alaric followed its movement, gripping his sword all the tighter.

She sat on the table in front of him and lay one of her bare foot near his crotch. In another day, Alaric would have plowed her at once, but his fascination for her wiles compelled him to wait.

“Who are you?” he breathed, feverish, his sword slowly lifting to her chest.

She laughed. “You know who I am.” She removed her foot, much to Alaric's frustration, and crossed her legs. “After all, haven't you come to kill me?”

Alaric heaved a breath. He had. His frenzied blood settled with a cold purpose. His voice lowered. “Allow me to introduce myself, then. It is only fair considering that you will die by my hand.”

She settled further on the table, almost sitting on his lap, harboring a confident smile, as though she wasn’t the one held at sword point. Her eyes met his and Alaric was at a loss all of a sudden when confronted to the unfathomable molten gold of her pupils. It almost felt like fire.

His lips curled thin and her straightened his back all the while securing his grasp on the shaft of his seax. “I am Alaric, son of Athalaric, himself son of Sigebrand, son of Theodebert, son of Chramn, of the blood of the great Tautomer, general of Rome, blood of the Franks.”

She lifted an eyebrow, amused. There was behind his words something else than pride. Anger. She tilted her head, intrigued.

And concealing her grief, she spoke. "I am the daughter of Orbia the fair, herself daughter of Censilla of the old gods and Orbius of the Gauls, sister to Sichilde and daughter of Eutharic the pagan. All dead at the hands of men of your lot. As for my name,” her mouth widened into a mirthless knife-like smile. “It has power unbeknownst to you and I like to keep it that way.”

“Shame. I like to know the name of those I kill.”

“Did you find me all alone?” she asked, her voice sheer sunlight.

“Your ox steerer helped in that regard. Your slaves too.”

Bruneflède could feel blame echo in his every words. She could hear his revolt, his revulsion, his apparent detachment. She could hear it all and everything in between. Her eyes darkened.

“He is not my ox steerer. They were not my slaves,” she bristled, stiffening on the table.

“But it is for you they die.”

Bruneflède's rage simmered, fueling her veins with more than magic. Those were Fredegund's! They were all Fredegund's! The queen owned them, their death and Bruneflède's soul! Their deaths were only another chain for Bruneflède to serve! Kill or be killed! The law reigned supreme! And so what if for a moment she felt rueful not sticking the dagger herself into their throats! So what if she lived and they died! She survived! She always did!

Her eyes seared like an ardent sun. If Alaric had been a boy, he would have feared her rage. But he had glimpsed this kind of anger far too often to ever be impressed. Warriors, slaves, peasants, women. They all raged. None more than his father's.

Slowly, her chest heaved with a long inhale. Her anger passed, her smile softened, honey in place of fire. “So no armies.”

He shrugged. “As far as I am concerned.”

Somewhere, deep inside, fear lifted its head. No armies. No waves of men unfurling themselves upon her. She would at least be relieved of this humiliation.

“And so you have come here alone, drank my mead, eaten my grain.” Her smile grew lustful. “Slept in my bed...” Her finger sensually brushed the length of his sword. “Did you die on my bed, Alaric of the Franks? Even a little?”

Alaric's murderous grin echoed her words. “Is that where I am supposed to slit your throat?”

A faint sadness swept in her eyes that Alaric was blind to. Not the bed. She would not insult her parents dying there. She would not insult her pride laying down her life where always she had.

“Here or there... Does it matter? My table is altar enough that my death is to the eyes of the gods a suitable offering.” Alaric's blade dug more pressingly into her skin. “Isn't it what you have come to find? My death?”

Alaric sheathed his sword and took his seax instead. This was murder. Not war. Some tools were more suited than others. “Did you foresee it?”

Bruneflède shrugged. “The Fates are yet to decide.” She felt the cold of a new blade and arched her back. “Kill me gently?” She offered her chest, one breast bare, a minuscule drop of blood running down the tip of his seax on her skin. “Or,” she said with a smile, her finger softly driving the blade away. “You could capture me. I could be your slave. I could be your hostage. I could be a gift to your queen, my magic bound to her.” She gave her words a pause and tentatively lifted her eyes – luring molten gold – to him and locked her sight into his grey pupils. “You could tie me.”

He sneered. “You? A captive?” His seax now rested against her throat. “Do not think me daft,” he growled. “You are Fredegund's witch! Why on earth would you desire to offer my queen your services? You would only spew your poison! I know you would seek Austrasia's destruction!”

“That is indeed what I would have done, had the queen not give me my leave,” she said, hoping this brazen lie was convincing enough for Alaric to lure him into a scheme.

He frowned. “How are you still alive, then? It does not make sense.”

She eased her back on the table, her long golden hair falling on her chest with a sensuality beyond compare. “I curse, I maim, I spew poison as you have so well said. Why wouldn't she be afraid?” And why wouldn't Bruneflède be afraid of a woman who had filled her empty carcass with purpose? How could she not be afraid of the woman who had given her everything – who could wrest back everything?

Alaric secured his grip on his seax, the blade digging deeper into Bruneflède's flesh. “Or perhaps I ought to cut your tongue – kill you right where you sit.”

She cocked a grin, and slid her tongue on her lips. “Help yourself, lord.”

Alaric paused, suddenly uncertain. A deep frown darkened the grey of his eyes, wrath cleft asunder by doubt and a cold calculation. The witch gone, Fredegund’s hounds would come after him, follow in tow, slaughtering him like a mere mouse. Even burdened with years on battlefields and a body-count as high as the tallest mountain, he was no match for an army - a pack of wolves. He would be annihilated in a blink. Alaric’s pride could not bear it. No matter his father’s berating, Alaric’s decision was set.

The witch would be his leverage. He would keep her so long as his feet trod on Neustrian grounds and kill her once he reached the neutral ground that was Paris.

After all, Brunehaut left no indication as to when he had to kill her. He could still fulfill his mission. The odd magic of the letters compelled him so and he doubted that the witch’s magic had any power over it.

And he would lie claiming that the thought of such a woman in his power wasn’t enticing. Who wouldn’t want to possess so alluring a molten gold?

Alaric’s seax spun in his hand, the tip softly grazing his temple. “Or perhaps I could have some use of you,” he mused, hoping that she would beg. “Perhaps you could crawl and beg me.”

The witch guffawed dryly. “Would I? Have I not already offered myself to you?” She slowly touched the ground with the tip of her toes and just as ethereally glided around Alaric’s seat, her hand wandering over his shoulder, tempted to play with his tawny hair.

Alaric shivered, his member fully awake. Her smell was enough for him to want her. His hand tried to grasp her wrist but already she eluded him. She was wind and he could not catch her. But he wanted to catch her, feel her rock underneath him, grasp the warmth of her skin, possess her entirely. For a moment he understood why the queen had kept her for so long. She was indeed beautiful, enough to turn men’s heads, but there was a darkness to her, a power Alaric could feel abuzz in her veins. She was magic incarnate.

But upon a closer look, there was something beneath her sharpness, something almost brittle that Alaric almost missed if it did not resonate with him. Something he willingly looked away from.

Her bracelets fell loudly on the table, tearing the warrior away from his deep thinking. Her eyes found his and a smile made its way across her face, a smile that rang hollow. “My name is Bruneflède, lord. Should you kill me, I thought you would like to know.”

Alaric’s grin echoed hers with a savagery let loose. “Much appreciated.”

Bruneflède’s eyes meandered towards her tapestry, sitting unfinished in a corner of that house she had known all of her life. A foreboding settled her blood. “We will leave today,” she said, more as a statement waiting for confirmation than a strong assertion.

Alaric clicked his tongue. “That’s correct. I would like to leave Neustria as quickly as possible.” He cocked his head to the side, a snide grin etched on his face.

“And we will head for Lexovia.”

Alaric’s grin grew an appraising edge, his eyes scanning her in appraisal. “You are quite deft for a pretty thing.”

Bruneflède concealed a burst of mocking laughter. The oaf was blind and senseless too if he thought for one moment that she was not more dangerous than him. He thought her a thing to be disposed of, but Bruneflède knew she was a child of the gods. There were things more lethal than swords. What was silver to gold? A dim radiance.

One by one her bracelets fell, expensive gifts from the queen of Neustria, she whose eyes were both prison and elation. Let his eyes follow their glinting on the ground. There were crafts far more precious than gilded jewelry.

Her fingers danced over her tapestry. “And you will take us to the river Seine. From there we will ride to Paris and there,” she paused, her grin sharper on the roundness of her lips. She shrugged, a playful edge to her eyes. “We will see. Nothing is set in stone after all.”

And threads were so quick to unweave themselves.


	6. Lexovia

Bruneflède's nimble fingers danced over the worn copper of her dagger, the touch so familiar she took roots into the bleak cold of the day, the sun hidden under a wet mist. Clad in warm clothing, a woolen keltoi tied over a thick long-sleeved dress, she secured the fastening of her peculiar cloak, that which radiated gold and destiny. A slight frown betrayed her wariness with the ominous clouds above. Her mask of indifference usually so sleek was now folded with the looming power of olden gods above that old forest and its legends. Not even her purse of runes and that bag stacked with countless lead sheets was enough for her not to cower under forces far more powerful than herself.

It all crashed down on her, compressed her guts with a teeming frenzy that made her yearn for a way to escape her body.

Her fists tightened around the hem of her cloak, her lips reddened with the mark of her teeth. She closed her eyes and listened, and found silence, interspaced with faint howls and hoots far away; a life that settled her, making roots out of her feet.

She knew the movement of the earth, the certainty of impermanence, the short time she had been given, the smallness of her existence, how she only was alive for a few seconds to vanish into thin air, unsung, unremembered, her name a speck of gold in the air for wind to blow away. She knew that. She felt that shortness so acutely sometimes it manifested itself in the pain in her teeth; and yet, she felt eternity as sharply, and often it made her soar with possibility, with the knowledge that comes what may, forests and mountains and solid ground would not yield.

"Your wrists," Alaric coarsely grunted, striding towards her with a length of rope.

Bruneflède drew in a long inhale, distancing herself from her contemplations, veneering her fears and her pain. Looking weak was a luxury she knew would kill her.

"Is that necessary?" she purred, giving her voice that tone of innocence, of demure femininity she knew men adored. "I am yours, am I not? Where would I run, lord, when I have already given myself up to you and your queen?"

"You do understand that I can't take any chance." Alaric gave a wolfish grin, enhancing the grey of his eyes. "Besides, I don't think I can trust you yet."

Bruneflède shrugged. "Such a shame. My hands bound, I won't be able to reach for you when I need it." She smirked and presented her wrists. "Tie me then, my lord, do with me whatever you please."

Alaric fastened the ropes around her wrists, tightened the rope on a purpose so clear Bruneflède knew he wanted her to feel pain and humiliation. She would rage, if she had any pride, if she had not already been used and abused, if she didn't know how to mask her feelings, if she felt anything anymore.

He then proceeded to tie the bounds to the rear of his horse, and Bruneflède felt an echo of her rage call back from the depth of herself, a red thing amplified with time and use. She would curse him, kill him, sacrifice him on old stones to Nerthus, Njord or her mother's gods, but Fredegund's eyes were on her a spell she wouldn't dare to cast away, for fear of being bare, unprotected. Fredegund's eyes were her only certainty. They were the only thing still making sense, and Bruneflède had long learned to bend to their will.

She wondered what it felt being a queen, with no concern but one's factions, one's politics, one's place, and one's ambitions. She wondered what it felt to be so powerful one's concerns were not small enough for people like her.

"I take this means I am to walk," she said, the lilt of her voice giving away her sly grin.

With a grunt, Alaric climbed on his steed, turning back to address her one of his wolfish sneers. "You'd hurt the back of my horse."

And Bruneflède resolved upon making him regret the decision, resolved upon making herself impossible to forget, impossible not to hear, impossible not to _yearn_ to hear.

And when he spurred on his horse, she let go of a little moan, and to her satisfaction, saw a shiver shake his spine, and considered that she had won a battle of her own.

And slowly, her bundle on her back, her dagger safe where it was, the cloak made of destiny fastened to her, she watched the forest fade away, back to its legends and its timeless depth. Slowly she watched the apple tree shrink, ever and ever smaller, felt it bleed, felt it burn, wondered if she would ever see it again, if it would feel for her like old monoliths; used, forgotten, engulfed by nature, by her gods, forever hidden. She wondered if it would burn, if it would rot, she wondered about its magic and its use, the tears she had spent there, the dawns she had seen there. She wondered if ever the remains of her existence would disappear, and felt again the shortness of her time, the pain in her teeth and the scar on her cheek sear.

She recalled, clinging to the last testaments of her youth she carried on her - from curves of ink, sheets of lead, dagger, cloak, scars and magic - the days she had spent there. She recalled the lost smiles of her sister, she recalled her mother's lullabies, the tales of her parents' love, the days her mother would lead her father up the hill and survey the green expanse below, recounting stories of old, of druids and tribes, of clans unifying against a larger enemy - those stories her father loved. She recalled her grandmother, her wisdom, the days her back did not hurt when she would conjure myths centuries back, and her sister would gape, eager to know more, speaking of magic like she would of love. She recalled the hot days when they would bathe, and play and laugh, the colder days when they would huddle by the hearth, the spring days and the flowers Sichilde used to cover her with. She recalled her words, her kindness, and she grimly recalled what killed her.

And her heart hardened again, rage turned hatred turned resolve turned fury. Sichilde had died there. Her mother had died there. Her father had died there. Her whole family had died there.

She should have burned what remained long ago. Regrets only made her weak.

And emotions drained her. They passed, like a storm, and again emptiness took ahold of her.

Lost in her gloom she vaguely noticed entering Lexovia. Her feet suddenly met the old via Romana, the sensation of supple ground giving in to solid stones steeling her, compelling her eyes to gaze at the height of the defensive walls, the houses, scattered at every side of the road, the hill, towering over her, green and bare when ground met cliff, and the cathedral, and its bells afar.

It stank, and the stench brought back memories; of scarce days when she had gone with her father to buy food they had in rare supplies during the hardest winters. A glimpse at the heavy bulk sitting on the rear of the horse told her that he had picked his share from her own granaries. She wondered what more he had taken; her fire, her food, her bed, herself. She wondered if he considered her part of his loot or if she had for him a greater significance.

And decided to make herself more valuable than gold itself.

"Are you already tired? And I who thought that fierce warriors such as yourself could slaughter for days."

"We're not sleeping in town."

"Afraid?" she taunted.

He laughed. "No."

"You should."

He huffed a sigh and led his horse towards a man, sweeping in front of his house, a cart resting against his wall, unused.

"How much for this?" Alaric asked, nodding towards the cart.

The man lifted his head, appraising his looks with wariness - fear even - and it did not take Bruneflède much to imagine his thoughts. This was a man clad in all the garb a Frankish warrior had; from the seax at his side, to the round shield fastened on the saddle of his horse, the sword and the spear at the other side, his long tawny hair, his beard and his leather armor, shining with a few rings of mail.

The man's eyes then went to her and his thoughts Bruneflède also knew. She had too keen a memory to have forgotten those words half-whispered in her wake. He thought her queer, with that ugly scar on her beautiful face, the gold of her eyes, the gold of her hair - Frankish, this he had not doubt - and the lines coiled around her arms, the keltoi, the bracelets and the dagger at her side - Gaulish, this he knew. He thought her a thing in the middle, half-woman, half-gaulish, half-everything.

He gave her one last cautious squint, one that betrayed his leer, and turned to the Frank, perched on his horse.

"What do you want my cart for?" he asked.

Alaric turned on his horse, smug and smiling, a side of his mouth cocked into an insufferable grin. He nonchalantly gestured to her, bound to his horse. "Well I just won a prize as you can see, and I intend to marry her on my family's estate a little north."

The man tilted his head and clicked his tongue. "Still doesn't tell me why you want my cart. You have a horse, don't you?"

"Have you seen what it already carries? I cannot lay off our food. I don't know if we could survive otherwise. Poor soul, I have forced her to march for too long already. Ain't a way to begin a marriage."

The man squinted at her. "Is she Frankish your bride? Or Gaulish?"

"She told me she was a Frank. In which case, my laws apply to her, and having her bound is no crime."

The man scoffed. "I know the law of your lot."

Bruneflède spared a glance at Alaric, and saw him so sure of himself, so in control, that she felt mischief awaken in her mind. Oh, she knew the law. Her father was fond of it despite it all. It was venerable and ancient and her family had always had a keen interest in olden things.

She gave herself a dumb air and darted her eyes from the man to Alaric, faking utter confusion. She squinted at the man as though she tried to decipher his words, played with his own confusion until he frowned in turn and Alaric appraised her with a wary glance.

The man stepped forward and took her chin, tilted her head, measuring the extent of her senses.

"A problem, lass?" he asked.

Bruneflède opened her mouth as though she was to speak but made no sound to account for it. The man turned to Alaric, ruffled feathers and defiance stoked anew.

"Is she mute or deaf, your bride?"

Alaric coarsely laughed. "No."

"Can you hear me?" the man asked Bruneflède who shook her head in response, beseeching in her eyes, pulling at her bounds to gesture to her ears and tongue. "God almighty! She is deaf and mute! Poor thing!"

"She is not," Alaric gritted. "She's fucking acting!"

Bruneflède spared him a glance and widened her eyes, showing a shadow of terror, shaking her head for good measure, accounting for her fear of her captor. The man sharply turned to Alaric, the moment in which Bruneflède smirked, much to Alaric's irritation.

"She does not seem like acting to me." He left Bruneflède and came to stand in front of Alaric, arms crossed to account for a brawny bulk. "You know the law that applies to the Franks, I trust, the germanic law, that which states that a deaf or mute person cannot wed. How can consent be given without those capacities in full?"

"I told you," Alaric growled. "She's fucking acting!"

"And I tell you that you are a liar!" the man yelled.

Alaric's hand went to the shaft of his sword. "In the name of God you will pay this insult!"

"Olvia!" the man called. "Bring me my axe!"

A woman Bruneflède believed to be Gaulish from the sound of her name and the clothes she wore came out of the house, gripping in her hand a spear, an axe and a bludgeon. And she witnessed a change in Alaric, and she knew not whether to account light or merely bestiality to it, but it was there and she knew that he had already decided of the man's death, should he persist so carelessly.

And she realized, exhilarated that she had done that. That she had launched a force against another, that her words - or lack thereof - could shape events. She realized that destiny was in her bones, and she forefelt omens, vibrating against her ribcage.

Alaric lept aground, drawing his sword, bearing a wolfish grin. "Who are you to deprive me of a bride I have fought hard-won battles to take?"

"The fuck do you care?" the man yowled.

"I like to know the name of those who insult me. So that I may remember them by when their time has come."

The man laughed, his scorn loud and plangent, and Alaric's hand on his sword became insistent. Intent. Bruneflède knew he was to kill him. Bruneflède recognized the basic bestiality making a home in the grey of his eyes, recognized the savagery in the many scars marring her face. She recognized him by way of familiarity. He was a stranger to her. He had come unannounced and made himself a bed to lie in the vast canvas of her existence, and she had seen it like a hazy scene. He was oddly new to her, and yet there it was; familiarity. She knew his kind. Knew men. Creatures of little consequence on their own, but when given power, who thought themselves gods.

She knew different. She knew her gods. She trod their temples, called their names, acted their will.

And she watched with a grim joy that man - that hound - she had let loose on another.

The commotion drew heads out of doorframes and soon enough a gathering had crammed in the muddy street. And Brunflède beheld them all, men and women armed with their best steel, tense with anticipation, beasts ready to leap.

"Release the girl, warrior. It is not too late to preserve peace in this place," the man warned. "Lest we demand a funeral and a nameless tomb. And I'd hate to pay for a weregeld."

Alaric paused, relented for a moment, measuring the vast strength mustered against him, his eyes pausing on her, narrowed with the realization that he had been fooled. Concealing his rage, he sheathed his sword and heaved a long and heavy sigh for show.

He met her in a stride, cupped her chin and forced her head up. And she gave him a grin, one that said that she had won, one that betrayed her enjoyment and her bloodlust. And saw that his eyes traveled from the corner of her mouth to the scar on her cheek, his thumb following the line until he grinned a grin of his own, an idea lighting his eyes iridescent silver.

"Come on, dove, I know you are scared, but it is no way to treat your husband to be. What happened to your beautiful voice? Ah. Have you used it to extinction last night? Well I should have been gentler, my sweet, but given your urgency, I thought that it was what you wanted." And he proceeded to smack her ass, conjuring a yelp from between her lips that at once relieved the tension on the streets.

Men glanced at one another, and the man Alaric had nearly slain stepped forward, his face taking to purple, visibly enraged to have been fooled.

"You should punish her, that girl. Behaving like that... Get her in line next time."

Alaric turned with a smile so bright Bruneflède knew it to be a mockery, a honeyed farce. "I will try. But you know how women are." He looked at her with eyes of thunder. "They whine and they trick you and whine again when chastised. You have to teach them their place."

"Would you like me to take care of it? Seems like you don't manage that well."

Alaric ran his eyes from her lips to her feet. "No need. I believe I have just to right ideas." He brushed the scar on her face. "A girl so ugly should not take herself so highly."

"And a man so beastly should not make himself a husband. What are you but the dirt beneath my feet, the shit of your horse and a thoroughly bad fuck?" She seethed and watched to her satisfaction his face harden with anger. "Nothing I tell you. I should shave your hair in your sleep and get on with it!"

The man beside them widened his eyes and whistled. "Quite the temperament your bride."

"The harder to subdue the better. So I was told by my father," Alaric answered affably. "This one's tough. A worthy wife, I reckon. Once she'd tamed." His hand suddenly was around her throat, his thumb resting on her lower lip, pressing it so her mouth was opened. "And I shall tame her."

His gaze met hers, hard and relentless, bound with anger at being played with, underlying desire for her lips and bloodthirst he was eager to finally quench. And she returned it, time on her side to account for centuries of myth and legends, temptation to give in to magic, millenias unraveling in front of her very eyes, unmatched wiles and years of bending men to her whims. She had long learned how to look, how to gaze, and to appraise what any man wanted. Men thought her a whore and on that account, she conceded that she had the skills. But she was so much more and this she knew. She felt destiny as acutely as his hand tightly coiled around her throat.

His eyes met hers, hard and feverish, and Bruneflède reveled in the touch of his calloused thumb on her soft lips, and she leaned into him, brought her head an inch from his, giving her lips that quiver, that _yearning_ ; angling her head so as her intentions be clear, that she wanted him, enjoyed this banter, enjoyed being played with, enjoyed being a thing.

It was but a game after all, and she played it so well.

He presented her as his wife. Why not? She had been far worse before.

The pressure of his hand grew hesitant, and Bruneflède became acutely aware of the awkwardness of those staring at them. It was as though they were witnessing something forbidden, something intimate mortals were not meant to be privy to.

And, giving her eyes that sultry gleam, she pressed her lips against the tip of his thumb, picturing a kiss or something far less delicate.

At once he withdrew as if burned, and Bruneflède would laugh were her indifference not critical to her designs.

He turned to the crowd, a self-satisfied smile plastered on his face. "She bites."

And conjured a row of laughter from those who had been despite themselves witnesses in a play foreign and kept secret from them. Nerthus's power was after all in secrecy. And the control she felt sent her on a ride, on a bright mood not even the clouds above could dim. It was exhilarating, truly, to hold the reins, to pick up which thread to undo, which ones to pull. She clawed at the very fabric of destiny, toyed with their mind with an act only she could decipher the arcane of.

Oh, she knew the effect her touch had on him, knew the outcomes. She knew what he would dream of, knew he would pick up the clues, fragments of what she could give, and cling to them as a reminder that she was in fact a woman, that she was wild and true, that she knew more than him; and he would seek control, and he would wrest it from her when already she would hold him in shackles.

And she would cackle if she could. But a presence lurked in her mind, one even Alaric's feverish gaze could not erase. It was there, like an old instinct, a knowledge, insidious, creeping behind her in the shape of a pair of fair eyes.

Citizens of Lexovia might gaze at her, but she felt them distant, all of her senses drawn to those eyes hidden to them, coming from the depth of the forest, the depth of he fears. She felt them, sharp, intent, and found herself remote from her own body, away from crowds and crowd-pleasers.

Until a cold shiver chilled her to the bone.

They were followed.

Despite an easy transaction which saw that Alaric abandoned a few coins in exchange for a cart and a load of additional supplies, he could clearly feel suspicion grow as to his captive and the fascinating power she exerted on those surrounded them drew more and more people out of their homes. They gawked and preyed on them and Alaric could feel if not see their wariness. Those were people used to the sword and its misdeeds. Those were men who knew how to defend themselves, and Alaric had no doubt about whether they would sooner call the mayor or the bishop.

They couldn't afford to stay here. Not for a minute longer.

Already he saw them whisper, already he felt that cold dread settling in his bones, grounding him in the few moments preceding a battle.

Already he pictured the chaos, the hubbub.

And Brunhaut had been clear. His mission must be accomplished under the cover of secrecy. Drawing Chilperic's men from their slumber when wars threatened to be waged across the kingdom of the Franks would jeopardize it and have him killed.

This was a fate he'd rather avoid. He would not make the same mistakes his brother did.

"Thank you," he said to the man who had sold him his goods. "My bride and I are grateful for your understanding."

"Bring her back when you're married and she has given you a son. We might drink then, and you'll tell me how you came upon such a wench."

Alaric saw her flinch at the word, and darken at the tone. He wondered for a moment what to make of it, but cast the thought away. He had enough of her already taking ahold of his mind, her grasp cold and steady and recalled for a luscious moment the feel of her lips against his thumb, the lust of her tongue and what she would do with another part of his anatomy. He was full with sensations of her already, the softness of her skin, the smell of her hair, the sound of her voice, the sight of her scar - it brimmed and threaten to send him on a path he was afraid would mean no return.

He kept his part, though, and they departed from Lexovia under minute scrutiny and the general yoke of mistrust. Bruneflède smirked, this he was not blind enough not to see, and soon enough they were out of sight and found shelter in a farmstead wherein its owner granted him a space in the stables in exchange for a coin or two, which Alaric obligingly produced.

He was setting camp, carefully appraising his surroundings, seeking a place he could tie his captive to, when light footsteps drew his attention away.

It was a boy. A little older than six. A child with round eyes, seeing the world with an innocence already tarnished by years of war. It was a child, a son the like of which reminded him of his own.

He looked at him, his gaze full of fearless curiosity. And Alaric softened under his scrutiny. The boy tossed him pieces of straw and laughed as it caught in Alaric's hair.

And Alaric shook it off, let out a playful grunt, one of those that had made his son laugh once. The boy tossed straw again, and again Alaric pretended to be ruffled by it. And the game went on for a while, until the boy got tired of it and sat down, making faces, distorting it so as to give himself a fearsome air, and Alaric gaped and widened his eyes, gave himself the face of one cowering in front of power.

And the boy laughed.

And Alaric found it again; that odd familiarity, that vulnerability he had rarely allowed himself to display. All of it to a child. All of it to a boy whose face reminded him of his own, of the days spent marveling at this man in the making, waging war for his future, protecting from real monsters, pretending to be one - a safe illusion - for the boy to know not to be afraid; that monsters were only humans, that in the embrace of God there would be no fear.

And maybe Alaric had misthought. Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps this was no truth but a lie he had played all along. Perhaps what he sought to protect him from had been a lie, and perhaps monstrosity lay elsewhere.

The child had died. And Alaric had wept.

He had been kind and true, and often Alaric thanked his mother for that blessing. She who he had never loved. She who had been soft and compliant, demure in spite of scorn.

So often did he think about the child that it took him in the heat of battle. A wistful glimpse at what might have been. He would have been a warrior. And had he been braver than one he might have fought his father and become a magistrate, leaving low deeds to low men.

A pipe dream Alaric only stoked for fear of his own desires.

He had loved that son. So dearly it often seemed that a part of himself had died with him.

So he relished the moment, basked in it until the familiarity settled him, and found in the depth of his soul something lost he had often gotten a whiff of. The boy laughed. Alaric smiled, the harshness of his features softening to reveal a man he could be.

He booped his nose, tickled him and pretended to be wounded when the boy hit him in the arm. He grabbed his arms and whirled him around, propelling him in the air and catching him at the last moment, again and again until the boy was sore and dizzy with the game.

And Alaric abruptly came to a stop. Feeling the sear of golden eyes on his back, a lioness - if what he had read had been true. He felt her, cold and relentless, preying on his every mistake, every weakness to seep into it and make herself a home into his mind. He could clearly feel it. He _had_ felt it. And if he had allowed it previously, when he had a say over what he displayed, there were things he'd rather she had no dominion over.

His desires, yes.

His son, never.

He turned his back to the child who, displeased with his sudden lack of interest, ran back to the main house, and hardened himself again, the words of his father clear in his mind.

"Sleep," he grunted while setting his cloak in a comfortable corner of the stables. "Tomorrow there will be no rest."

"Am I to catch a cold, Alaric the warrior? Wouldn't you rather we aid each other and I slept with you? You might enjoy it" Her voice was low, conjuring an odd sort of hunger in the pit of his belly.

"As much as this would suit me, I'd rather not."

"But I am so cold. I could be of use to you tonight."

Alaric spared her a glance and wrapped himself in his cloak. "Then freeze, witch. And be quiet, lest I gag you."

Her laughter filled the night with a cold lilt, and as mirthless as it was, Alaric could almost make out fear.

And what she feared, he would rather he never knew.


End file.
